RLP 156: Tracing 19th Century Germans Part 1

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 156, Tracing 19th Century Germans Part 1. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Diana (44s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (46s):
I’m doing okay. I have a little cold, but I’ll do my best to talk. I’ve been having fun working on and organizing some DNA results from our cousin. And I wanted to share a quick thing that I learned, which is to always check both sides of the family, to see where the common ancestor is. Even if there’s a shiny object on one side, that seems like that’s where it would be. You know, this happens every once in a while, where a DNA match will have the tree link to them and the wrong place. Have you ever seen that? Where the person that they’re attached to in the tree is like already been deceased for 30 years?

Diana (1m 28s):
I don’t know that I’ve seen that one.

Nicole (1m 29s):
This is like the second or third time I’ve noticed it. So the lady had attached herself to her grandmother. I think. So I messaged them and the person who manages her test, had put her email address in her profile. So I used that and she got back to me right away and told me that person’s parents and stuff in the tree that was linked to her was the wrong person, there was the Welch surname and that’s the line that I’m working on. And it was like, a line I had never seen before going back to Georgia and I was, it was a really high match, like 150. And I was like, wow, this is really important clue. I’m like, this must be like what I’ve been waiting for.

Nicole (2m 10s):
And then when I finally figured out this person’s position in the tree, the mother’s side was completely blank so that I was like, well, I better make sure she’s not related through the mother’s side. So as I did some research on the mother’s side, I figured out that that mother’s side was really a close match from John Christian Harris’ and Elizabeth and Melissa Welch, our closer ancestors. So that was disappointing, but it was also a good lesson to me to always check both sides of the family tree, because even if it looks like, oh, there’s that surname I’m looking for and, and it was on our Welch side of the family ’cause of shared matches and that I saw the Welch surname. And so of course I just lept to that conclusion, but it wasn’t right.

Diana (2m 51s):
With that is a great example. So what have you been working on? And I just recently did a visit to the cemetery with my mother-in-law and my husband and I had been wanting to get up to the cemetery because I knew that there were a lot of ancestors up there on my husband’s side, on your dad’s side. And so we decided to go up and visit. It turns out there were 14 and it was my mother-in-law’s parents, both sets of her grandparents and all sets of her great grandparents. So it was really fun. And we learned some lessons too about doing some cemetery research. I thought it would be pretty easy because they were all in one cemetery and she had lived there her entire life.

Diana (3m 33s):
And I really didn’t know if she would remember when everybody was buried or even she had visited all the graves. I thought probably not. So the night before I got out Billion Graves and, you know, got an idea of the cemetery and just thought that, that we could walk in there and find them. And that, of course it was never that easy. So when we got there, of course, Billion Graves doesn’t work as well on your phone and you can’t really see your screen very well. Can’t really pull things up because it’s really slow when you’re not at your home at your fast wifi. And so we ended up wandering the cemetery for quite a bit found almost everybody, but the last two, and we couldn’t leave without those last two.

Diana (4m 15s):
Right. And then finally I noticed the directory, you know, this thing that I kind of been ignoring where it had everybody alphabetically and where they are located in the cemetery itself, then we found the last ones, but I thought, wow, we could’ve saved ourselves some time, but I figured that out first, that’s pretty fun that we get to continue learning. And that’s what we love about Genealogy. We do have a couple of announcements before we get to our guest and our podcasts. So we have our DNA Study Group starting in September. The registration is now open for that as well as our applications for peer group leaders. So if anyone is interested in joining us, please go to family Lockett and learned more and be sure to join our newsletter, to get our special coupons for our study groups and courses, then have a fun, new announcement that we have got a door prize for today’s episode.

Diana (5m 10s):
We’re going to be talking all about German genealogy and our friends at Genealogy publishing company are going to give away at German Genealogy, quick sheet for someone that are drawing. So to be entered in our drawing for the door price, just go to family, lock it to this podcast, which is episode 156. And just leave a comment in the comments section, and we’ll do a drawing at the end of the week, and you’ll get in the mail at German Genealogy, quick sheet. So kind of a fun, new thing that we get to start doing occasionally.

Diana (5m 49s):
And

Nicole (5m 50s):
Thanks to genealogical publishing for sharing those resources with us, we’ve been talking about them and they just have so many wonderful resources that we know our listeners would be interested in.

Diana (6m 1s):
Right. Well, today we have got Heidi Mathis back. Hi Heidi.

Heidi Mathis (6m 7s):
Hi guys.

Diana (6m 7s):
Heidi joined us a few episodes ago to talk about Germans in Missouri and the St. Louis area kind of mid 1800s. And she has been writing a series for us and Family Locket about getting started with researching your Germans. And so today we’re going to have her help us to learn more about that. And we’re so excited because we don’t have hardly any experience and German research, and it’s been fun to be learning all about this. So Heidi has German expertise as well as DNA expertise. So those two things are really great skill-sets. And Heidi, I wanted to ask you, we have been working on our Isenhaurs, which is one of our German lions, and we did a recent podcast about them.

Diana (6m 56s):
Did you have any thoughts from listening to that podcast? You know, some holes in our research maybe we could fill in or just some different perspectives from your experience?

Heidi Mathis (7m 6s):
Yeah. Well, I’ve always loved listening to your podcast and that Isenhaur line is super interesting. I think it’s amazing that you are connected to president Eisenhower. I was listening or a couple of weeks ago, and you were talking about how you thought, well, if they’re German, maybe they’re like the ones in Missouri that were generally against slavery. And I just wanted to say that that just kind of nicely illustrates what I was trying to do in part one of my blog series was kind of trying to differentiate between the Germans that arrived in the 1700s versus the ones that arrived in the 1800s. So Germans in any situation in the United States, German Americans will generally just blend in with whatever culture is around them in general.

Heidi Mathis (7m 53s):
And so most Germans didn’t go south, but some did. And so if your German went south, they’re very likely to take on the culture around them. And so I think there was just like this one kind of unique period in which we talked about the last time I was here, the mid 19th century Germans had when they just arrived. The 48ers had come from a revolution in Germany that they had lost. And many of them became, or some of those people became leaders and newspaper writers, and they were pretty liberal. And that plus the desire for land and the fear that they might not get voting rights made them different than that made them much more pro abolitionists than their neighbors, especially the Germans that were further south, like in Saint Louis or perhaps in Cincinnati.

Heidi Mathis (8m 39s):
So I thought it was just a good illustration of in this blog series because Germans are so such a complex group that encompasses so many different kinds of people and so many different time periods that I really for this blog series was trying to focus just on the ones that came in in the 19th century.

Nicole (8m 58s):
That’s so helpful to get your perspective on the Isenhaurs and why we had thought, you know, maybe they’re liberal and that’s why they didn’t own slaves, but it makes sense that there’s different groups of Germans and each one had their own set of circumstances influencing their beliefs.

Diana (9m 13s):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s a great segue into our topics for today because we’re going to be covering the first two blog posts that you wrote about getting started with your German research. So first of all, let’s start off with the challenges. So tell us a little bit about why it is difficult to research our German ancestors.

Heidi Mathis (9m 36s):
Well, I think just in listening to other people, and even for myself, it’s just a different language, you know, and people of German descent, haven’t always taken German and don’t know a lot about the culture. Like for myself, I actually took a lot of English literature classes in college and studied a lot of English history. And so I know a lot about, you know, just being an American, you sort of absorb a lot more about English culture and English history and English literature. And so when it came to trying to understand the history or, and even the cultural aspects of Germany, I, I just had no idea. And so I think that’s one of the big hurdles is just that cultural and language hurdle.

Heidi Mathis (10m 18s):
And, and I do think that a lot of people, once they get back and see that there’s going to be these records in German, you know, they just kind of throw up their hands. And so I felt really strongly about writing a series that was for people who don’t speak any German and have very little experience with it, just to show them that there are steps that you can take. And that if you ask the right questions and take these steps, that you really can make progress, even if you can’t read a word of German.

Diana (10m 48s):
That’s exactly what I need is that type of an approach. So even though we do have these challenges where we don’t know much about German history, we don’t read the language, we don’t speak the language. There are some advantages I believe. Can you tell us about those?

Heidi Mathis (11m 3s):
I think to me the most exciting thing is just the records themselves. Once you are able to get back and find some records in German and maybe some newspaper articles, I almost think that 19th century Germans are one of the best people to descend from if you’re researching your ancestors, because Germans tended and, you know, and my experience, the birth states that they give you, you know, in the United States that they reported themselves tend to be pretty accurate. And once you get back into those records, they are pretty detailed, you know, and they often list the mother’s maiden name. I have a Swiss line. And when I’ve gotten back into those records, those records lists the parents of the child when the child was born, when they were baptized all of their godparents and the relationship sometimes of the godparents, the child, and then they’ll list the parents of the parents and their occupations and their villages.

Heidi Mathis (12m 2s):
And so just what the one record you’ve gotten back generations. And so, you know, it’s not going to be like that every time, but I think you’re pretty lucky if you have a German ancestor in this period, because the records can be pretty amazing.

Diana (12m 17s):
And that is awesome. I can’t believe that those records are so good that might explain why sometimes, you know, you do see those genealogies that go back quite a ways and it’s because the records are really clear. So that’s exciting to think that you might be able to uncover some of those.

Nicole (12m 34s):
Think about when did your Germans arrive, how is that important? And, and, and what can we learn about that?

Heidi Mathis (12m 39s):
I think that was just a great question to start off asking is when you are looking and you see, oh, I’ve got a German ancestor here, you know, it’s just figuring out who the immigrant was and figuring out what period of time they arrived in. And that’s just kind of goes back to the Isenhaur example. It’s, it’s kind of being able to tell, is this somebody who’s been here for a few generations and really fits more into the Pennsylvania Dutch situation, or is this someone who arrived in the, in the mid 19th century or the late 19th century? Cause that makes a huge difference on how you think about their religion, the culture they might’ve had here in the United States and, and why they came.

Heidi Mathis (13m 21s):
Just to talk for a second about the Pennsylvania Dutch, you know, I think there were smaller numbers overall that came in the period of the 18th century, but because they have been here for so long, there are so many people right now who have Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, because they’ve been here since the 1700s and, you know, had big farming families often. And those people were often leaving Germany because that was the period where it was after the reformation and there was just a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and Germany over or religion.

Heidi Mathis (14m 3s):
And so there were these dissenters sects of Protestantism was that were arising like the Anabaptists and they were being persecuted. And then there was also the 30 years war. And that was probably one of the most scarring events in all of German history. And so anyway, the Pennsylvania Dutch were often fleeing Germany because of pressures resulting from that religious to-ing and fro-ing. And so those people, there were very likely to be Catholic or Lutheran, but there’s going to be a fair percentage of them that were dissenter sects. And so that’s something to know when you’re researching those ancestors, as they could be all kinds of different religions in, you know, if they were coming in that period.

Heidi Mathis (14m 47s):
And also the people in that period tended to be coming from what’s known as the Palatinate and down into. And so that along the Rhine river, so the very western part of what is today’s Germany, whereas people coming in the 19th century, they could be coming from any part of Germany. The questions that we ask in the research process are so important. Instead of just searching around and looking for information in general, we want to ask a question and see if we can answer that. And so that one of the first ones to ask is, you know, when did they arrive?

Nicole (15m 21s):
That’s such a good question, and I’m glad you brought up the religious persecution and, you know, some of those smaller Protestant sects, like the Anabaptists. That’s so interesting because we all know about the Mennonites and the Amish, but it is true that when you research Germans, you typically look for the Lutheran churches. So it’s good to be aware of, you know, at the time when they came and also the different religion that they might’ve been a part of that

Heidi Mathis (15m 46s):
Totally. I think finding out what your Germans religion was, is totally key to being able to unlock their records. And we’ll be talking more about looking for church records later, but I was going to talk just a little bit about exactly who am I talking about when I say the 19th century German’s. And first of all is to think about that. This was one of the largest group of people to ever immigrate into North America. There, I counted up about 7 million that came between 1820 and 1900. And the most came in the mid century per capita. And the most in sheer numbers came towards the very end. So the bulk of those immigrants did not come in the early part of the 1800s, but really in the middle to the later part of it.

Heidi Mathis (16m 30s):
And, and as we were talking about before, why did so many Germans come? And I’m sure there’s 7 million reasons, but sort of the general historical tide that was going on was that you had factors that were always present, you know, for making people want to immigrate like war and famine. There were potato famines in Germany and in this period, they weren’t as bad as the ones in Ireland, but they were pretty severe. The late 1840s are called the hungry forties. And obviously in central Europe, there’s always been so many wars. But the thing that I think just ignited immigration for Germans in this period was there was a kind of a population boom that occurred.

Heidi Mathis (17m 15s):
So Germans tended to be very focused on land. So once you had this population, boom, people had trouble inheriting enough land. So, you know, coming to the United States was a great pull factor in that way. But some of the push factors were that the, you know, the industrial revolution caused a lot of disruption and there were people whose jobs really changed for most the part in this period. People lived in rural places, but once the industrial revolution happened, that was just a lot of movement to cities. And there were a lot of urban problems. And, and so I think some people were leaving just of all of that change. You know, they could come to the United States and go back to a simple occupation, like being a farmer.

Heidi Mathis (17m 58s):
One thing that might be fun for people is if you discover what state your German was from, kind of going and looking at the history of that German state and what, like, what wars were going on and that period, and were there any famines and what was the dominant religion in that state, would be great things to start looking at.

Diana (18m 20s):
That was an interesting statement that you made that things are going to be more industrialized within the area. And that may be some people wanted to just work as farmers, but that wasn’t an option for them anymore. So the thought of being able to move to the United States and have their own land could have been a pull factor. I had never thought of that. So that that’s really interesting. I am kind of fascinated by that idea. Plus I think that is something that we talked about in the past episodes was this whole idea of freedom. You know, we just had have the American and the French revolution’s and this idea that people could rise above, they didn’t have to stay in the same station in life that their ancestors had been in for generations, that probably really helped provide some impetus for coming to America.

Heidi Mathis (19m 10s):
Oh, I think that’s very well said. I think that that desire for freedom, especially with those 48ers, you know, where they had, you know, they were really pushing hard for freedom and their, or revolution failed. And so many of them just were disillusioned and came to the United States in hopes of believing that they would have more rights here so that the feudalism had just ended. I was surprised to hear that, you know, that they had had feudalism, you know, it had been disappearing since the 1700s, but that was still there. And it was only really finally ended in the earlier part of the 1800s. And so, as people were no longer tied to their farm of the landowner, there was just all this agitation and some of that was kind of frightening for people.

Heidi Mathis (19m 53s):
I think that there had been all these rules and you knew exactly what you were supposed to do. And so that period of the, of the 1900s was just such a period of change and, and re-invention, and yet it was also at the same time, maybe a little bit frightening for some people too.

Nicole (20m 11s):
I bet since we were talking about Germans and the 19th century.What did the term German actually mean in that time period?

Heidi Mathis (20m 20s):
That’s such a great question. And it’s one that we often don’t think about because the United States is one of the oldest democracies. You know, our, our country has been the way it is for, you know, it’s obviously growing and stuff. I didn’t think about the fact that like Italy is a newer country and you know, it only started around the same time as Germany and even today, many Germans and Italians have a lot more allegiance to their state than they do to their nation because the nation state is a fairly new thing and in central Europe. And so when we start with our, our mid century, 19th century German ancestors, when they came, they were not leaving from Germany, they were leaving from Hess or Bavaria.

Heidi Mathis (21m 4s):
And so that’s what you’re going to find on there. 1850 and their 1860 and their 1870 U S censuses up until, you know, 1871 when the German state was first started. And so that could be an, a real advantage for a person with a 19th century German ancestor. Cause they can have a hint right there as to where their German was from. It was when they came to America that Germans or thought of as German in a way, you know, they were called the Dutch often by their fellow Americans or even the Hessians because as, as a kind of a pejorative term, because the Hessians had fought on the side of the English in the Revolutionary War.

Heidi Mathis (21m 46s):
So often anybody of German descent could be kind of pejoratively referred to as a Hessian or just as the Dutch. And that’s always confusing for people when you’re talking about Pennsylvania Dutch, you’re not actually talking about Dutch people, you’re talking about Germans, cause it’s a misnomer of Deutsche. When we think about what does German mean? You got to think about what does it mean for your ancestor and for them it would have meant most of their allegiance would have been to their local area. If you think about a mix of all these Germans, for instance, pouring into a big city like St. Louis, they would have had different dialects. You’ll probably notice that those people who are older and not married when they came, probably married somebody with their same dialect.

Heidi Mathis (22m 29s):
I’ve certainly noticed that with my ancestors, it’s probably cause hearing their own form of German was probably such a relief for them amidst all the English and all the other dialects. And so I think that’s one thing that’s kind of interesting to think about. The other thing is just as I’ve been saying is just get back into the history of just because I personally never grew up with understanding very much about German history. And so just beginning to learn a little bit about it, and one of the main political bodies was the Holy Roman empire. And so just researching a little bit of that and understanding that over time, there was just so many shifting borders in that empire.

Heidi Mathis (23m 11s):
And so that just feeds into the idea that there was no sort of German identity and that even today that that’s somewhat still true. I mean, I think German identity has been more forged in the last decades than it has that probably ever been. Anyway. I think, I think that when we are talking about our German ancestor, one of the challenging things is understanding if we could find their village and understanding what the jurisdictions of that village were and how they changed so much over the years. And that, that is something kind of unique gets sets that apart a little bit from perhaps for instance, English or Irish research.

Diana (23m 53s):
Well, I love that you talk all about understanding the background of the history and the geography and where they came from. And I think that’s a really good perspective that I have not thought about. You know, of course I’ve seen people on the census records and immigration saying that they were from Bavaria or has, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it wasn’t Germany per se, and so different perspectives on what the Germans were thinking they were and versus what the Americans thought they work. That’s a really good perspective for us to keep in mind as we’re researching. So you’ve talked a little bit about understanding that time that they came from and the place and this idea of jurisdiction.

Diana (24m 37s):
And so I think it’s probably good for us next to talk about the best records that to begin with. What’s your advice?

Heidi Mathis (24m 47s):
Well, I think the best advice I could give anybody who was just starting to like plan their research in a German ancestor, a re you know, a 19th century German ancestor, is to really get all the low-hanging fruit you can from every record set are possible, but you wanna spend and invest your time in the research that you really need to dig down into. It would really pay off to research that church records because of what we were saying earlier. And so often they can have such great information in them. And so they may not be online or indexed yet, but it’s well worth researching them.

Heidi Mathis (25m 27s):
And in the blog, I quote the German research expert, Roger Minard, and he’s a BYU professor and he is heading up an amazing project where he’s gotten to 35 volumes cataloging all of the German American records they can find that list of hometown in and the records. And in his research, he’s sort of realized that, this is my understanding, so he can correct me if I’m wrong, but in doing so much research in German American records, he’s kind of noticed that Protestant records, the Lutheran records are more likely to contain the hometown and that Catholic records, they were more focused on listing parents than the hometown.

Heidi Mathis (26m 10s):
So, and it’s not like you might, you know, you may get back to your German and find that the church record doesn’t list very much. I mean, that could happen, but quite a bit of the time, if your records, especially if they’re Lutheran are going to be well-worth finding, and even if they’re Catholic, they’re going to be, well-worth finding, I have some Catholic ancestors and I found their church records and, and, and it listed the parents, you know, and they were kind of unique names. And I was able with those, those parents’ names and the birth dates to get some good clues about where to search for this family. So if there was one thing that I could leave everybody with, besides, you know, trying to understand some of the history behind German immigration would be the importance of, of church records with German research.

Diana (26m 54s):
That’s really good to know. I think every area that we researched has a different type of record set that you start with. And so it’s good to know that with the German research, you start with church records, great advice.

Heidi Mathis (27m 7s):
Absolutely. And just like when we were talking about the Pennsylvania Dutch having sort of somewhat more diverse religious, you know, possibility that your ancestor could have been one thing to think about what the 19th century and later is that by this time period, there were three state religions that all of those dissenters of sects had either, you know, they had been persecuted, and so they had either left or had converted back to a state religion, and those state religions were Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed. And the Reformed category is pretty small. So the vast, vast majority of 19th century German ancestors are either going to be Catholic or Lutheran. You know, there’s always going to be exceptions, but that’s why it’s important to ask it, like when did my German ancestor come?

Heidi Mathis (27m 52s):
Anyway so the question is we are starting to prioritize our research for our German and so where are we going to start? Well, it’s going to be the same for everybody. You’re going to want to start with your ancestor and work backward in time, and really understand the relationships going back and get them as well-known and, and certain as you can. And you’re going to want to create a timeline, and you’re going to really, really want to pay attention to their FAN club, their friends, associates, and neighbors that has so often been the key for me, figuring out and being able to take the steps backward to find that church record that were looking for you. We want to see first, if you can find either like a newspaper article or a civil marriage record that lit can list and give you some hints about where you might be looking for this amazing church record.

Heidi Mathis (28m 43s):
So the first question you’re going to need to ask is like, what religion was my ancestor? And you can look at their descendants. That can be a hint, but it’s not always going to be the right thing. I, I have, you know, my great grandmother was Catholic, but she had only one grandparent who was Catholic. The rest were all Lutheran. And so that was a little confusing for me. And one of the ways you can figure out what the religion was and their church is to look at their civil marriage record and hopefully find the pastor’s name. And by really researching that pastor, you know, and that can be hard, but it’s definitely something you want to try if they were in a big city like St. Louis finding the pastor is going to be not as hard because you can sometimes just Google their name and there’s going to be articles they’re going to appear in, or little history is, or sometimes you can look the city directories, you can trace your ancestor from in-between censuses through those amazing city directories.

Heidi Mathis (29m 39s):
In the case of one of my ancestors, I, a lot of them actually went to this one church in St Louis called the Holy Ghost Lutheran church. And I kept seeing this pastor Dr. Hugo Krebs. And by researching him, I found out that the church wasn’t listed in their civil marriage record, but this pastor was. And so by looking at him, I found out what church they went to. And so once I had the name of that church, I could start looking to see if those records were online. So I did, I found them at FamilySearch. So I can’t tell you what a treasure trove the records of that church, I mean, and I’m still kind of mining those records because not all of my St Louis Germans went there, but probably about 80% of them did and I’ve been able to unlock so many of those lines because those church records the earlier ones are written in German, and they often were not listing parents, but they were listing hometowns.

Heidi Mathis (30m 38s):
And so, you know, you just get the clues where you can find them. And, and it’s just like a puzzle piece that you’re trying to unlock. I would highly recommend looking for those church records. And I know that it’s probably a little easier if your ancestor was from a big city like St. Louis and a lot of Germans went to rural places. So that can be a disadvantage. It can be maybe a little harder to figure out who the pastors were, but the advantage in a small town is that there were not as many churches that they could have gone to. And then also the newspapers in small towns are amazing, you know, if they will list the smallest details about what your ancestor was up to.

Heidi Mathis (31m 20s):
So, you know, there’s kind of different ways you have to attack your ancestor records depending on, you know, where they from the big cities like St. Louis or from a rural place, like in Nebraska somewhere.

Diana (31m 32s):
Wow. Those are such great ideas. So I just wanna clarify that we’re starting with church records and it’s important to figure out where those are, and some of the great clues are in the newspapers or the city directories, or just trying to figure out what churches are available in that area. So, part of the Research Like a Pro process is to do a locality guide. And one of the things that you can do is to hone in on that hometown, where your ancestor lived and then figure out what kind of records are available for you to search. So, like you mentioned, figuring out the newspapers or the city directories or the churches, so that could all be in your locality guide.

Diana (32m 16s):
And then that will give you some really solid places to research in trying to find these church records. So, you know, we’ve mentioned a few of those American records that we can look for our German ancestor and in the United States. Can you tell us a little bit about German language newspapers? Because I know that those can be a fabulous resource, but I think there’s also some challenges with those.

Heidi Mathis (32m 42s):
Th that’s another great question. Yeah. I had a lot of trouble finding any of my ancestors in German language newspapers in the beginning. I think some of the technology of recognizing the font that was used, it’s called fraktur. That that was a little harder, but I think it’s getting better. I think they’re picking up more and more of the names. And I just think over time, you’re just going to have to keep going back and looking for your ancestors surname in the right dates that they may have been in the newspaper. And now I’ve been surprised lately. I’ve been finding a whole lot more of my Saint Louis ancestors in the German newspapers in and found just amazing things. And so we know at first I was, you know, like, how do I know I read this? I was finding people who spoke German to help me translate them but I watched this great webinar, which I linked to it in the blog post.

Heidi Mathis (33m 30s):
But you know, what I’ve been doing lately is following that person’s advice and just getting the, the newspaper article up and downloaded a fraktur font. And I just try to copy it into Google docs and I’ve, amazingly enough, Google docs will recognize when I have misspelled a word in German and correct it to the correct spelling. So it seems to automatically know I’m in another language. So that’s pretty amazing. And then once you get it in there and you feel like you’ve got it looking like the newspaper article that you’re seeing, you can just change the font. You know, it’s much easier to read in a, in another font. And then you can just copy that into a translation app, like Google translate.

Heidi Mathis (34m 12s):
So that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s been working really well. So I just want to encourage everybody to not forget those German language newspapers for sure. Or

Diana (34m 22s):
That’s a really good point. So ships passenger lists, I think everybody wants to find that for the immigrant ancestor. So we can, that help us with discovering something about the background of our German ancestor.

Heidi Mathis (34m 35s):
Absolutely. And something you’d for sure what to search for. And, you know, and my experience, the Hamburg list is going to be the best one for listing. And that that’s the outgoing list that they may have gotten on, that one would be the most likely one to list the closest approximation to their hometown. But in general, and my experience looking for the passenger list is something that you absolutely want to check for, but it’s usually not going to be the holy grail. It’s, it’s not often going to list their hometown. It can, but the main reason you want to look for a passenger list I have found is you really, really want to see who they came with and look for their surname amongst all the other passengers.

Heidi Mathis (35m 17s):
And, you know, in some cases you’ll find, I have one ancestor that came and everybody on the ship was from the same area. And it was over 200 people. It’s just so important when you have a difficult surname or, or, or you have brick walls is to really look at that German’s FAN club. Often Germans were coming with their family, or they were coming with people from their village. And so that is definitely a stone you want to overturn is who they came with on that passenger list.

Nicole (35m 45s):
What about naturalization records? Are those something that you usually will find for your German ancestors? I

Heidi Mathis (35m 49s):
Haven’t had a lot of luck with that, but I do think that it’s one of those things that you absolutely want to check because some naturalization records will be super helpful, especially the later, your German ancestor came, the big things you just really want to make sure that you have checked, you know, that naturalization records going and going to be really important because you never know, it could absolutely list and some super important information

Diana (36m 14s):
Well those have been some great tips. So the main points from this episode are to really try to find that hometown and that can often be through church records. And then also to find their FAN club. We say the FAN club a lot, but for people who are new or don’t understand what that means, that it’s friends, associates and neighbors, I guess I should say friends and family, but it’s all the people that our ancestors associated with and ’cause, they might’ve come with peoples from their home town or other family members or friends. That’s really worthwhile to search those ship passenger list and try to see who else they were coming with. So thank you so much, Heidi, for giving us all this great information in our next episode, we’ll talk more about researching our Germans.

Heidi Mathis (37m 2s):
I look forward to it

Nicole (37m 2s):
and thanks Heidi, we’ll talk to you guys again next week. Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next Study Group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com to share your progress and ask questions. Join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our e-course or Study Group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.