If you have not started with family research, so be warned: Once you have started this hobby, you will grab the ancestral fever and you will never get rid of it!
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By Edwin E. Braatz
"Not only trees roots" - this insight is attracting more and more people How to know the custom. The real attraction is compounded when the research penetrate the darkness of past centuries and destinies. Then the track will own creation to knowledge thread!
bring in experience and consider how your great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and other ancestors have been called, how they really live where they grew up, what kind of job they had, what do they have special done or suffered, how their life was marked by social conditions at that time, they had enough money or debt, often ill? It is as if suddenly a very personal past is alive ...
Immerse yourself in these mysterious past. It's best to start with a survey of relatives and friends.
Tip: Start at the top today with the questioning, because tomorrow the caller can be dead!
Write down everything you can learn: what people say about the character of your ancestors as they were set up, what they ate, whether they were happy - and indeed everything you can to find out.
Gather in your family photos and memorabilia, personal letters, business papers, autograph books, and other biographical documents, memorial card, already existing Sippschaftstafeln and newspaper articles, old city maps and postcards. When open the oldest relatives their drawers, you always find important and useful!
deserves much to be recorded in the picture since it may soon be destroyed before: old houses and tombs, including texts, which can not be photocopied. In the case of old photos can be produced very cheap reproductions.
When you are finished with the survey, look no further in old documents at registry offices, parish offices, local historians, archives and libraries.
registry offices
If you have evaluated the documents collected in the family takes, your next path to the certificate authorities of the registry offices. There, since 1 January 1876 the register of births out. From them you belong in a photocopy of birth, marriage and death certificates.
In German regions (not just left-bank), which were once under French influence, there is the beginning of the 19th Century civil status registers, which store today at the registry offices.
church records Church records are records of baptisms, marriages and Beiset estimates, which are created by ministers in chronological order. The earliest church records are those of some of Reformed churches in Switzerland from around 1530. In southern Germany, church records often begin in the Mid-16th Century, in West Germany about 1600.
Many old church records are gone, however, lost due to various circumstances, so that for many parishes, church records at the end of the 18th Century begin. Except for the space Silesia / East Brandenburg, the losses of the Second World War are relatively low.
In central church archives older books are for everyone without any restrictions, otherwise it is already in the parish office: It depends on the willingness of the pastor, whether you may get the books or are opposed with regard to the lack of time or privacy. TIP: Courtesy to the priest, his housekeeper (in Catholic parishes) and the head of the municipal offices often do wonders!
are not always older church records or copies still in the parish archives. Very often the old church records were made some time ago in an archive, mostly from a Catholic or a Protestant bishopric Archives Church Archives. Call the best in there. In any case, you can contact the local association for your area for family researchers, provides information on the location of you are looking for church records.
Who wants to see church records from abroad, must think not just of foreign travel. are from the former German eastern territories, several Collections of personal status and church records in the West have come across. Particularly interesting is the service of the Mormons. This US-based religious group takes on old church records on microfilm, which she filed in Salt Lake City, USA. About the Mormon communities, eg in Frankfurt / Main, you can view these microfilms.
local historian
By then, if you have evaluated the church books, you realize that further advances in family research only with good knowledge of local history are feasible. Only then is it also possible for the ancestors and relatives into perspective in the society of the past. Find out whether already has a local history of the area in which you conduct research there.
Especially in recent decades by many cities, towns, parishes, local historical societies and good books have been given out, is shown in the history of each area. TIP: Try necessarily contact a local historian. This can save you much trouble. The address you find in the parish office or at the Gemeinde-/Stadtverwaltung. Almost always, even in small rural communities with a municipal employee charged with the management of the archive, which you can then provide additional contacts.
Other sources
If you come to the church records at an end , and you can also use the local historians do not help, you need to consider other, more sources in the archives to rate: They are citizens directories, subjects directories, land registers, tax lists, chronicles and much more in the municipal and state archives. follow
very good chance your family or your ancestors to the High Middle Ages, when you have noble ancestors. On the history of most noble families, there are more or less good publications or at least hand-written family trees in archives or libraries. Extensive records of the royal central administration provide particularly good opportunities for research.
But for officials You can expect many research opportunities. The story of officers families is the family research of particular significance because it since 17 Century conditions with many marriages between the rising civil service and the (partial) was socially descending needle. Find your ancestors at an official, you should study the history of his family very well, as there are in a descent from a noble particularly good secondary sources.
For military personnel who came from all social strata, there are special opportunities for research in the archives. In addition to screening lists, there are many personal files on the officers. Are responsible Archives of the country gentlemen, for the German army since 1871, the Federal Archives in Freiburg.
TIP: You can save your research a lot of work when you do systematically. In particular, the evaluation of the researched material is easier! It is important from the outset by a numbered notebook in which you enter all your activities and ongoing information. The evaluation you can later make lists or lists on people, places and literature. The best way to support
course, the Internet with your fascinating hobby of family research. " You will experience joy and satisfaction, as traced back to the trail of your ancestors leaves.
Here are two useful links for getting started:
http://www.ahnenforschung.net and http://www.ahnenblatt.de
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