If you’re an American and you don’t know the German language, you can still read Germanic documents. With the help of the German Word Lists found at FamilySearch.org, it’s really relatively painless.

There’s one thing I’ve found from experience and I want to pass this on to all of you that may be just embarking on reading your first 18th-century Germanic parish registers. You’ll find that the first two or three hours sitting in front of the microfilm reader struggling to make out the foreign words is tough. But with the help of the word lists, and time and patience, you’ll find that it get’s increasingly easier. Just don’t give up.

You don’t have to know the language (although that’s an asset). If you know enough of the genealogy-related words, you can do the research on your ancestors. I highly recommend the German Genealogical Word Lists at FamilySearch.

There a a number of very good books on how to do Germanic research. But you won’t find many of them online. However, a prominent exception is A Genealogical Handbook of German Research, by Larry Jensen. You will find it posted on the FamilySearch website, and it’s absolutely free…

Larry is extremely well-known in German genealogy circles. He is often found on the lecture circuit in the. U.S. In fact, I know that he’s speaking at the FEEFHS annual conference here in Salt Lake City this next week. I also heard that he’s speaking a day or two later back in Wisconsin.

Timed to open on Amerca’s holiday celebrating our Independence from England, the new BallinStadt Emigration Museum opened today (July 4, 2007) in Hamburg, Germany. The BallinStadt Emigration Museum is located on Vedel Island in the harbor complex of the Elbe River. The museum is said to present photographic displays and records of Hamburg’s part in the immigration story, in both its hopeful and darker sides. Genealogists whose ancestors left Europe from Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Russia and even Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland between 1836 until 1934, may discover relatives passed through the portals of the HAPAG “Auswandererstadt”.

Following are links to websites and articles - some new, some not so new, that detail the museum and its usefulness to historians and genealogists alike.

The BallinStadt Port of Dreams website (in English)

NEW July 6, 2007 - Hamburg Re-creates Emigrant World in New Port Exhibit - From Reuters.

New Museum Pays Respect to Europe’s Emigrants (On the July 4, 2007 article in Spiegel Online)

Picture Gallery (nine pictures) from the BallinStadt (On the July 4, 2007 article in Spiegel Online)

Hamburg hostel complex for Jews opens as a museum (On the Expatica.com website)

On 5 July, the BallinStadt Emigrant World Hamburg, located on Veddel Island in the River Elbe, opens (On the www.freepressreleases.co.uk website)

Building Museums to Mark the Places They Left Behind (On the Link to Your Roots website, January 5, 2005 Wall Street Journal article)

Hamburg opens Emigration Museum (On Durant Imboden’s Europe for Visitors website)

BallinStadt Emigrant’s World (BallinStadt) (On the Hamburg Tourism website)

Port of Dreams, Tears, Dreams and Ocean Liners (On the Hamburg Tourism website)

Hamburg Set to Open Emigration Museum July 4 (On the ModernAgent.com website)

HAMBURG PORT OF IMMIGRANT DREAMS - Ballin-Stadt Emigration Museum Hamburg (On the Bargain Travel Europe website)

Just a note about what is planned for the Map Guide to German Parish Registers series. Since we just finished the three Rhineland volumes, the last of which (Volume 13) included the Bavarian Province of the Pfalz (Palatinate), it made sense to just continue with Bavaria. So the next 10 volumes will all deal with Bavaria - as follows:

Volume 14: Bavaria RB Unterfranken
Volume 15: Bavaria RB Mittelfranken
Volume 16: Bavaria RB Oberfranken
Volume 17: Bavaria RB Oberpfalz
Volume 18: Bavaria RB Schwaben
Volume 19: Bavaria RB Oberbayern I
Volume 20 Bavaria RB Oberbayern II
Volume 21 Bavaria RB Niederbayern I
Volume 22 Bavaria RB Niederbayern II
Volume 23 Bavaria Master index to Volumes 14 through 22
Volume 14 should go to press within the next 10 days. It takes about a week for soft cover volumes to ship, and about two more weeks before we ship the first hard cover volumes. When Volume 14 goes to press, we will post the Volume Index, as well as shopping cart buttons at GermanMapGuide.com. I’ll also announce its availablity on this blog, as well as on GenealogyBlog.com.

I’ve known Kevan Hansen, author of the Map Guide to German Parish Registers, for a number of years. I first met him when he was working with George Ott, formerly owner of Heritage Consulting in Salt Lake City. At some point, I hired Kevan to consult with my attendees at the annual Christmas Tour, and we began to develop a friendship.

In 2002, while working for HeritageQuest in North Salt Lake, we bought a large German Parish database from Kevan and George. Kevan had compiled a database – with a number of fields – that showed where someone from any particular town in Germany may have gone to church. We saw the value in it and planned to publish the database in book form as well as electronically.

About the time that we were to publish the data, ProQuest made the decision to end the majority of their HeritageQuest retail operations, sold Heritage Quest Magazine to me, and from what I understand, they gave the database to the Family History Library.

Just before the break-up of HeritageQuest, George and Kevan again approached us asking if we were interested in maps of the parishes, as well as new and more detailed data. In order to produce the maps, a lot of original research would have to be done, and the cost was substantial. Management at HeritageQuest told them they weren’t interested. This isn’t surprising considering where the company was at that time.

In early 2004, after I had left HeritageQuest employment, George and Kevan approached me with the same basic idea. However, they wanted me to publish a series of books, not buy their data. I saw an opportunity and signed a contract with them to publish the Map Guide to German Parish Registers.

We published ten volumes in 2004 and 2005. In late 2006, I formed Family Roots Publishing Company for the express purpose of publishing the Map Guides. Three volumes, all covering the Rhineland and Pfalz, have been published in the first two quarters of 2007. We plan to publish the 10-volume Bavarian volumes in the last two quarters of the year.