Translating Records – Alphabets and German Script

If your ancestors were from Continental Europe, an important factor in interpreting of their records is the makeup of the alphabets that were used in the documents you will be reviewing.

Alphabets used for many European languages have special characters. Recognizing these special characters will help you find the documents because they may change the order indexes are sorted. Usually the letters with special characters are sorted after their normal counterparts. This will also help find the correct translation for the passage or phrase.

An understanding of the Old German Gothic script is also very important. You will find that handwriting and print that you find in your old documents are very different from the handwriting that we are familiar in today’s writing. Many letters and compound consonants were formed very differently from Roman Type. The letters f, h, j, s and t are very challenging to read in German Script. In German script they look very similar and differ only by the location of the loop or no loop. The interpretation of these letters has led to many mistakes in the indexing of names and place names.

Familysearch.org offers a German Gothic Handwriting Guide in their wiki pages that will give you further tips on reading German Script. Find it at:

https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/images/c/ca/German_Gothic_Handwriting_Guide.pdf

Timelines and Your Ancestors

I have included timelines in my family histories showing the year of immigration for all family members and details found on their passenger lists. This allows me to capture the total picture of the family’s arrival where as the other sections focuses on the individuals.

This has tremendous benefits for compiling a complete family history.

• The timeline can show gaps in knowledge about the family and events
• A family timeline showing locations will indicate the movements of the family and point to possible new locations to look for documents.
• Listing all family members in the timeline will help explain events as they relate to the individual family members.
• The completed timeline will give a basic outline for your family history.

Use timelines!

I guarantee that they will lead you to be more successful in your genealogy research and will make the family history that you record more complete.

Use Online Family Trees for Clues

Many websites allow researchers to post the family trees online. Although researchers may use offline lineage software to build their family trees, they may also use online trees. Many of these trees were the researchers initial attempt to save the results of their research but researchers have also found the online trees is an excellent tool to make contact with other people searching for the same ancestors and exchange information. Please remember that this information may be very exciting to find but you must do the work and verify its accuracy.

1. The value of searching online family trees would be to provide clues on where to look for the next level in your family tree.
2. The value of maintaining your family tree online is to make contacts with researchers to exchange information.

 Concerns when posting your family tree on the internet:

• Upload your tree to Ancestry.com – this may get you questions from other people who are researching the same people as you are.
• Be careful to avoid posting information that is private or that you do not want known outside of the family – such as birth, Social Security Number, etc
• Be as accurate as possible. Try to post only confirmed facts to our online tree.

Annual Polish Genealogy Conference September 13 and 14 in Lisle, Illinois

If you are doing Polish genealogy, you should consider attending the annual Genealogy Conference on September 13th and 14^th sponsored by the Polish Genealogy Society of America. Registration for the conference will start at 11:00 AM at the Hilton Lisle/Naperville and the list of topics and roster of speakers promise to be exciting for all Polish researchers.

Tomasz Nitsch from Poland will speak on the Polish State Archives and the exciting new efforts of the Polish Genealogy Societies.

Tomasz, nationally known speaker Ceil Jensen, and local expert Ola Heska will speak on the history and records of the Prussian, Austrian and Russian partitions.

Nationally known Thomas MacEntree will cover four different topics;

• Google for Genealogists
• Privacy and Our Ancestors
• Ten Ways to Jumpstart you Genealogy
• Successful Collateral and Cluster Researching

With my interest in Polish genealogy, this looks like a conference I cannot miss.

Registration and more details are available at PGSA.org

Types of records available online and websites that I have used

• Census  state and federal (Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, HeritageQuest)
• Passenger manifests (Ancestry.com, EllisIsland.org, CastleGardens.org)
• Naturalization papers – index and some documents  (Ancestry.com, Fold3, Familysearch.org, local county websites)
• Marriage index and some documents (Familysearch.org, Ancestry.som, State historical websites)
• Death index and some documents  (Familysearch.org, Ancestry.som, State historical websites)
• Obituaries (local library databases)
• Family histories (Familysearch.org, Ancestry.Com, Google books)
• Newspaper articles  (local library databases)

Sources for European Vital Records

Here is a summary of sources for European vital records that I use in my research. The exciting fact is that some of these are new and others like Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org are adding databases at an amazing pace.

•  Austria – Familyserch.org
• Czech – Czech Regional Archives Websites
• England – Findypast.co.uk, Familysearch.org, Ancestry.org
• Finland & Norway – Familysearch.org
• Germany – Familysearch.org, Ancestry.com, Matricula, Kirchenbuchportal
• Hungary – Familysearch.org, Ancestry.com
• Ireland – Findmypast.ie
• Italy – Familyserch.org
• Lithuania (included with Polish and Russian records)
• Poland – Familysearch.org, Geneteka
• Russia – Familyserch.org
• Scotland – Findypast.co.uk, ScotlandsPeople.go.uk, Familysearch.org
• Slovakia – Familysearch.org
• Sweden – Ancestry.com
• Most others – Familyserch.org

Our Ancestors and American History

The arrival in America of our ancestors was an important event for our families. Their arrival and the arrival of the many immigrants that came before and after them are a large part of American history. Most U.S. citizens are descendants of immigrants and these immigrants contributed to the tremendous growth of America. Most were farmers or factory workers. They did not become millionaires or political leaders but the U.S could not have achieved its growth without our immigrant ancestors.

Program at Cook Memorial Library (re-scheduled for 3/19)

Winter storm Rocky has made a casualty of my program Finding Grandma’s Ancestors  I was scheduled to be at the Cook Memorial Library in Libertyville, IL at 7 PM tonight. The library just called to inform me that they will close at 2 PM today and will contact me to re-schedule the program later this year.  With 5-8 inches of snow predicted, closing the library was probably a very save thing to do.

I was looking forward to presenting tonight because there were over 60 people sign-up to attend.  For those wanting to attend in the future please look at my schedule in the next few weeks or go to the library’s calendar.