There is an excellent map of ancient Germany found within the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, at the University of Texas at Austin website. It’s fun to try to line-up and compare this map with more recent Germanic maps of the areas in which your ancestors may have lived.
Citation: Germania [Ancient Germany] (843K) From A Classical Atlas of Ancient Geography by Alexander G. Findlay. New York: Harper and Brothers 1849.
Thomas A. Pick has produced a website with a tremendous amount of data for the Eifel area.
As of this date, he has posted data on 510,000 people in 620 towns found in the Eifel Region of Germany, bordering on Belgium, and Luxembourg. If you have anestors who lived in the area, his site can be a goldmine.
Alsace-Lorraine (Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen, or Elsass-Lothringen) was a territorial division created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and a portion of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and on the east of the Vosges Mountains. The Lorraine section was in the upper Moselle valley to the north of the Vosges Mountains.
Following Germany’s defeat in WWI, from 1919 to 1940, the area was again controlled by France. Germany controlled the area from 1940 through 1945. The area was returned to France following WWII.
The best websites online for studying the history of the area are:
Alsace-Lorraine - at Wikipedia.org.
Alsace-Lorraine, at the New Advent site of the Catholic Encyclopedia. An excellent site dealing with Roman Catholicism and the area.
Alsace-Lorraine from the 1911 Classic Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Alsace-Lorraine — an Enclave of Ethnic Germans in France - a simple timeline for the French and German rule.
Lorraine - GenWiki - at genealogy.net: Excellent genealogical information and links for research in Lorraine.
Alsace - GenWiki - at genealogy.net: Excellent genealogical information and links for research in Alsace.
The 483 page History of Germans in England (Geschichte der Deutschen in England) has been digitized and posted at Ancestry. The volume was written by Karl Heinrich Schaible, with a full title and bibliography of: Geschichte der Deutschen in England von den Ersten Germanischen Ansiedlungen in Britannien Bis Zum Ende Des 18. Jahr-Hunderts. Strassburg, Germany: Verlag Von Karl J. Trübner, 1885.
Keep in mind that the entire book is written in German, making it a bit difficult if you don’t read this stuff. The bibliography that starts on Page 470 includes a number of histories that were obviously written in English.
The following links are from the Ancestry search page for the book and are make up the Table of Contents:
Kapitel II: Deutsche in England unter den Plantagenets (1154-1485).
Kapitel III: Deutsche in England unter den Tudors. Henry VIII. (1509-1547).
Kapitel IV: Deutsche in England unter den Tudors. Edward VI. (1547-1553). Mary (1553-1558).
Kapitel V: Deutsche in England unter den Tudors. Elisabeth (1558-1603)
Kapitel VII: Deutsche Reisende in England im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.
Kapitel VIII: Das Studium der deutschen Sprache in England im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.
Kapitel X: Excentrische und abenteurerliche Deutsche in England im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.
If you have an interest in the history of the free state of Bavaria (Freistaat Bayern), there are two websites that you must check out.
The first is the Bavaria Page at Wikipedia.org.
There you will find sections on:
History
Geography
Politics
Economy
Culture (including religion)
Administrative Divisions (including links to pages sealing with their subdivisons)
Historical Buildings (with pictures)
Miscellaneous (includes famous people, Company names, coat of arms, etc.)
The second is “The Kingdom of Bavaria.” found in the New Advent, a page on the Catholic Encyclopedia website. Since 70% of Bavaria is of the Catholic faith, it’s reasonable that a website with a Catholic slant to it should be a good place to look for history of the area. It’s a good site.
Prompted by a link found on Dave Obee’s CanGenealogy.com website, I spent a few hours on the Bibliography of the Cultural History of the German-speaking Community in Alberta: 1882-2003 website last evening.
The website is compiled Manfred Prokop, and is a project of the German-Canadian Association of Alberta.
The Bibliography documents the cultural history of the German-speaking cultural group in Alberta from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present by assembling in one place references to the thousands of primary and secondary materials available in libraries and archives across Alberta and elsewhere.
The site consists of four parts:
1. The searchable bibliography containing 7,400 entries.
2. An hierarchically organized list of the keywords used to index the bibliography.
3. A Profile of the German-speaking Communities in Alberta.
This is a detailed narrative account of the socio-cultural history of the many German-speaking groups in Alberta from the 1880s to the present, accompanied by photos and excerpts from original documents. The site consists of sections on:
4. A map of Alberta and a list of the place names occurring in the bibliography. Clicking on a place name in the list displays the locality on the map. There are also regional overview maps and maps of East European regions from which many of the settlers came.
The above description is directed from the website itself. If you have German-Albertan ancestry, you must check out this site.
The internment of those of Japanese ancestry during WWII is historical fact that most Americans acknowledge. But did you know that 11,000 folks of German heritage were rounded up and imprisoned during the War? Following is an excerpt from an interesting article published in the July 14, 2007 edition of the Enquirer at Cincinnati.com.
Eberhard Fuhr was 17 years old in 1943, a star athlete at Cincinnati’s Woodward High School who dreamed of playing for the Cincinnati Reds, when armed FBI agents snatched him out of a high school classroom, the beginning of a four-year imprisonment.
Frances Ott Allen of Delhi Township was a 9-year-old living in a Victorian home overlooking Lake Michigan, when she, too, became a prisoner of the United States government.
There was only one “crime” the little girl and the teenaged boy shared.
It was the crime of being German in World War II America.
“There was a lot of fear, a lot of suspicion, especially in places like Cincinnati,” said the 81-year-old Fuhr, now living in retirement in Palatine, Ill., near Chicago. “Our family got caught up in it. So did many others.
“And, to this day, the government has not told us why.”
A bill now pending in Congress may finally answer that question, by setting up a federal commission to study the treatment of German-Americans and Italian-Americans by the U.S. government during World War II.
Fuhr and Allen were among an estimated 11,000 German-Americans - immigrants who had not become citizens and their children - who were rounded up during World War II on the suspicion of being sympathetic to the Nazi regime in their homeland.
They were sent to government-run internment camps around the country, to live as prisoners side-by-side with Japanese-Americans until the war was over.
It was done under one of the oldest laws on the books, the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, which allowed the internment of aliens of “enemy ancestry.”
Cincinnati, a city where nearly six of every 10 residents was of German heritage when the war began, had one of the largest contingents of recent German immigrants in the country. By the end of 1940, after the Alien Registration Act was adopted, 10,200 alien immigrants - most of them German - had registered at the Federal Building downtown.
Read the full article in the July 14, 2007 edition of the Enquirer.
See the German American Internee Coalition website for more information of WWII German Internment in the United States.
Click here for a map and description of the various internment camps.
Take a good look at all that blue territory in the above map. Many might call most of it “fly-over country.” In those areas, German was claimed as the largest ancestral ethnic group.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 42.8 million Americans claimed German ancestry when the 2000 census was taken, 15.2% of the American population. That number is down from 23% in 1990.
Twenty-seven percent of those people living in the Midwest claimed German Ancestry.
On a state level, the largest ethnic ancestry claimed in 23 states was German, including all the midwestern states, the majority of States in the West and one state in the South.
In three states, German was claimed by over 40% of the population:
See the full PDF file of a report titled Ancestry: 2000 for far more details. The above illustrations and data came from this online brochure.
Late last week, Ancestry.com posted the 1819 Mecklenburg Schwerin census. The August, 1819 census was taken in the Schwerin territory that had been elevated to the status of Grandduchy following the Congress of Vienna. The census was taken to determine the territory’s exact military quota. This census is the earliest of the area, and is complete. From what I’ve seen of it, it’s also highly legible. This census joins the 1867 Schwerin census already posted at Ancestry. I’ll write more about it at a later time.
As with most Ancestry.com databases, the 1819 Schwerin census is digitized, and fully indexed. I did a search for my family’s surname of Damm, and located the following 15 individuals living in Schwerin by that name. The data below isn’t a full line extraction, rather an extraction of Ancestry.com’s indexing. In reading the data extracted here, it is immediately apparent that the indexer was not familiar with even the most common of abbreviation techniques used in Germanic areas - Case in point - the entry below where the name is transcribed as Caths Schmidt Damm. The “s” on the end of Cath is nothing but the common technique for abbreviating the word Catharina or Catharine. My immediate question is this. Where are these indexes being produced? India or Bangledesh? If so, plan to supplement the Ancestry.com indexes with the printed indexes listed at the end of this blog.
Caths Schmidt Damm, f, OCC: Schneider Wittwe, BD: 4 Apr 1750; BP: Kartlow, RES: Wismar, DIST: Stadt Wismar.
Sophia Elisab Bielefeldt Damm, f, OCC: Ehefrau Desselle, BD: 11 Jan 1759, BP: Dersenow, RES: Roizenburg, DIST: Stadt Boizenburg.
An Soph Brausewaldt Damm, f, OCC: Kinderwarterin, BD: 6 Apr 1780, BP: Güstrow, RES: Warin, DIST: Stadt Warin.
Carl Damm, m, OCC: Tagelöhner, BD: 1782, BP: Poserin, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Carl Damm, m, OCC: Sohn, BD: 17 Oct 1811, BP: Malchin, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Dorothea Damm, f, OCC: Tochter, BD: 18 Nov 1813, BP: Malchin, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Friederich Damm, f, OCC: Tochter, BD: Oct 1818, BP: Malchin, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Jlhabe Maria Damm, f, OCC: Frau, BD: 21 Oct 1773, BP: Stavenhagen, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Joh Fried Damm, m, OCC: Arbeitsmann, BD: 1739, BP: Lage, RES: Goldberg, DIST: Stadt Goldberg.
Johann Damm, m, OCC: Schustergfe, BD: 9 Jul 1782, BP: Neukloster, RES: Wismar, DIST: Stadt Wismar.
Sophia Damm, f, OCC: Tochter, BD: 7 May 1815, BP: Malchin, RES: Malchin, DIST: Stadt Malchin.
Sophia Damm, f, OCC: Gulhelterin, BD: 30 Oct 1795, BP: Neukloster, RES: Wismar, DIST: Stadt Wismar.
Maria Damm Brockmann, f, OCC: Ehefrau, BD: 17 Jul 1787, BP: Güstrow, RES: Güstrow, DIST: Stadt Güstrow.
Carol Soph Damm Plath, f, OCC: Dess Ehefr, BD: 6 Jan 1788, BP: Neucloster, RES: Wismar, DIST: Stadt Wismar.
Dorothea Lübeck Damm, f, OCC: Not listed, BD: 9 Aug 1782, BP: Güstrow, RES: Güstrow, DIST: Stadt Güstrow.
The census is written on printed forms with the following fields:
The online census may be searched by just typing in the name of the person you may be looking for - or alternately, you can browse the census by district. The districts are listed toward the bottom of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Census, 1819 description (well below the search box).
Keep in mind that this census isn’t new to American researchers. It’s been available for years through the Family History Library - on 60 rolls of microfilm. There is also a printed index to the census, which made it relatively easy to access. See the following Family History Library citation:
Schubert, Franz. Mecklenburg-Schwerin Volkszählung 1819: Register der Familiennamen. Berlin; Göttingen: Ditterich: Im Selbstverlag, 1981-1986. 2 vols. in 5. (FHL book 943.17 B4s ser. 4.) The indexes are bound at the back of each volume.
So - if you don’t have access to the online Ancestry.com database, you can still order the film sent to your local Family History Center.
My friend, Jim Derhiem, who owns European Focus, guides small groups of genealogists all over Europe - with much of that time spent in Germany. Prior to doing private tours, Jim spent years and took thousands of absolutely fantastic photographs for individuals, including me. I used hundreds of his photos in Heritage Quest Magazine, and now use them on the cover of the Genealogical Helper.
Jim does a blog while he travels, an absolutely fascinating travel blog, complete with the pictures! He’s been in Portugal the last few days, but was in Rothenburg just prior to that. I used the above Rothenburg street scene on the cover of a recent Helper.
