Researching Your German Ancestors—Help is Here
October 28, 2015 By Guest Blogger
Tracing your ancestors back to their places of origin can sometimes make you feel like a tourist in a foreign country. Overwhelmed by unfamiliarity with the language, culture, and resources, it’s difficult to know where to start. The FamilySearch Facebook page recently dedicated a week in October to helping German ancestry researchers who were faced with the same challenge. Here’s a summary of the posts and resources that were shared.
Where To Start? . . .
Tracing your ancestors back to their places of origin can sometimes make you feel like a tourist in a foreign country. Overwhelmed by unfamiliarity with the language, culture, and resources, it’s difficult to know where to start. The FamilySearch Facebook page recently dedicated a week in October to helping German ancestry researchers who were faced with the same challenge. Here’s a summary of the posts and resources that were shared.
Where To Start? . . .
Unless you already know where in Germany your ancestors came from it’s best to start close to home. Searching immigration records is a great way to find clues about where your ancestors may have started their journey. The Germany pageon the FamilySearch website provides access to more than 54 million German related indexed records. It’s a valuable resource once you’ve traced your family lines back to Germany.
Research Challenges
Changing borders, shifting political alliances, and wars caused many people to leave the country. The migration of these people is also known as the German diaspora. Events that hastened migration present many challenges to family history researchers. But before these challenges stop you from doing more research, try reading the Germany Genealogy page. It contains useful information about past and modern place names and boundary changes.
Research Challenges
Changing borders, shifting political alliances, and wars caused many people to leave the country. The migration of these people is also known as the German diaspora. Events that hastened migration present many challenges to family history researchers. But before these challenges stop you from doing more research, try reading the Germany Genealogy page. It contains useful information about past and modern place names and boundary changes.
Where To Go From Here?
FamilySearch’s Learning Center contains a number of free lessons. Learn how to decipher different forms of early German script, using maps and gazetteers, and performing your own searches on the German website Genealogy.net. The Learning Center is the place to go to take your research to the next level.
A recently published FamilySearch blog post titled “What It Means to be German-American” written by Adele Maurine Marcum discusses benefits and challenges of being a German-American. Despite celebrating her ancestral culture as she grew up, she longed to feel more connected to her family’s traditions and legacy. The article highlights the connecting effect that her genealogical research had in helping her identify with her German past.
We hope that this event was helpful for those researching their family’s German roots. Please tell us your success stories and let us know which nationalities we ca highlight in the future to help you with your own research experiences.
This article was written and submitted by Anthony Christie.
FamilySearch’s Learning Center contains a number of free lessons. Learn how to decipher different forms of early German script, using maps and gazetteers, and performing your own searches on the German website Genealogy.net. The Learning Center is the place to go to take your research to the next level.
A recently published FamilySearch blog post titled “What It Means to be German-American” written by Adele Maurine Marcum discusses benefits and challenges of being a German-American. Despite celebrating her ancestral culture as she grew up, she longed to feel more connected to her family’s traditions and legacy. The article highlights the connecting effect that her genealogical research had in helping her identify with her German past.
We hope that this event was helpful for those researching their family’s German roots. Please tell us your success stories and let us know which nationalities we ca highlight in the future to help you with your own research experiences.
This article was written and submitted by Anthony Christie.