This diary continues where our Community’s suspended Friday “Open Thread” series leaves off…. What are you doing, genealogically speaking, this Memorial Day weekend? Some “tips” on Germanic genealogical research follow below.
Those of you who are looking for a particular rare German surname should try the German and/or Prussian Mega-Search Engine at ManyRoads! It also is good for researching your ancestor’s out-of-the-way hometown. ManyRoads is the creation of Mark Rabideau. On his “About Us” page he states:
“As we conduct our family genealogical research, we create and maintain archives for what we believe to be interesting and useful source information; we hope you find our archives helpful. They are all free, to the extent that copyrights allow.”
You can reach the Mega-search Engine Portal by choosing the first option under the homepage “Quick Links,” or just by clicking
here. The first search engine listed is the one for a
German/Prussian search. The sites this engine searches are revealed by clicking the second bolded line on that page, just below the “Help Fund Us” link. He currently lists 232 largely free sites, and you are encouraged to suggest others if you notice any key omissions.
Continuing, I noticed that the St. Louis County Library’s director of History & Genealogy, Scott Holl, was just honored by the National Genealogical Society. In reading their description of his accomplishments, I noticed that:
“He…created a one-of-a-kind, how-to finding aid for using the Deutsche Geschlecterbuch collection, a series of German lineage books of non-noble families.”
That certainly got my attention, as I love finding aids! You can find his
here. But let me also give you mine. Recently, while reading one of my several
German mailing lists for genealogy, I found this
link to on-line
Deutsches Geschlecterbücher.
That’s all well and good, I thought, but this large series has many volumes that pertain to a specific German state or Germanic region, and the list of online volumes forces the researcher to search the entire list to find these particular volumes. How about listing these DGBs by subject? And so I created such a list, starting with those noted as available online from the link shown in the paragraph above.
But then I added to it those DGB volumes that have been indexed by Familiengeschichtliche Quellen, Band 15 (a PERSI-style index that I mentioned last week in the comments to the diary). The Immigrant Genealogical Society Library doesn’t carry the DGBs, but the Los Angeles Public Library does have them. So, if a regional DGB volume hasn’t yet been digitized, but has been indexed by FQ-Band 15, then I can know whether it’s worth a trip into the city by first looking for a surname-of-interest in that source. All of Band 15 is available at the IGS Library, and then I have most of the volumes (in duplicate) at my house. Thus in the list of regional DGB volumes which follows, those marked with an asterisk are the ones which have been indexed by FQ-Band 15, but not yet digitized.
Baden — 81, 101
Baltikum — 79
Berg — 24, 35, 83
Brandenburg — 111
Deutschland-Schweiz — 42, 48, 56, 65
Eifel — 99
Hamburg — 18, 19, 21, 23, 27
Harz — 106
Hessen — 32, 47, 52, 64, 66, 84, 94, 107
Kurpfalz — 58, 86
Lippe — 72
Magdeburg — 39
Mecklenburg — 57, 74, 88, 105
Nassau — 49
Neumark — 93
Niedersachsen — 46, 89, 102, 113
Ostfriesland — 31
Ostpreußen — 61, 68, 117*
Pommern — 40, 67, 90, 115*, 136*, 137*, 145*, 155*, 174*,191
Posen — 62, 116*, 140*
Ravensburg — 82, 194
Sauerland — 38, 53, 97
Schlesien — 112, 153*, 178*
Schleswig-Holstein — 91
Schwaben — 34
Thüringen — 87, 114
Westfalen — 108, 193
Westpreußen — 126*, 132*, 133*, 182*
And, if you’ve read this far, don’t forget to mention in a comment what you’ll be doing in the way of genealogically-related activity this weekend!