by Beccy Martin, professional genealogist If you read Heidi Mathis’s 2021 six-part blog series, “Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors,” you are likely feeling ready to go hunt down records for your German research projects. Heidi’s excellent article provides rich context and numerous resources to get you to them, as well as tips and clues about how to tease out the information they contain. If you haven’t read it, or it’s been a while, I...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about using DNA evidence to help with your Pennsylvania German research. We talk with Heidi Mathis about her experience using DNA with her colonial German ancestry. She noticed that her recent German side has fewer DNA matches than her colonial German side. We discuss differences in match lists, using autosomal DNA for more distance research questions, and an example from the Hittell family in 18th century Pennsylvania. ...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is a discussion with Alice Childs, AG, about additional record types that can help with Pennsylvania German research, including tax records, military records, naturalization records, court records, German Newspapers, and family records. We go over Fraktur and Taufschein and where those can be found as well. Transcript Nicole (2s): This is Research Like a Pro episode, 211 Pennsylvania Germans part five more records. Welcome to Research Like a...
With 2021 coming to a close, we reflect on lessons learned. What progress did we make in our research? What do we want to learn in 2022? One of my favorite things about family history is the opportunity to research in new locations and times – opening up the opportunity for using new records and methodologies. One of the hot topics in the genealogy world is DNA and it comes as no surprise that seven...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about using DNA evidence to help further research on 19th century German ancestors. Heidi Mathis returns to discuss her experiences using ethnicity estimates from AncestryDNA, segment data, and MyHeritage filtering of matches. She discusses some of the challenges for using German DNA, including less clear ethnicity estimates for those with German ancestry and a smaller number of Germans who have tested. Transcript Nicole (1s): This is...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is a continuation of our series on tracing 19th century German ancestors. Heidi Mathis is back sharing about what to do next after you find the hometown of your ancestor in Germany. We discuss Archion, the German website for Protestant records and how to find baptismal records there. We also talk about the German mega-site, CompGen.de which can be used to locate German Genealogical Societies, German State Archives,...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about researching German ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. in the 19th century. Heidi Mathis shares the importance of getting the surname right and learning enough German to be able to understand the records we find. She shares tips for doing wildcard searches in databases where names may have been transcribed incorrectly or spelled differently than we thought. She also gives hints for reading German handwriting. Transcript...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about the challenges of German research when focusing on 19th century Germans who immigrated to the U.S. Heidi Mathis shares several questions to ask when beginning to research them, like “when did your Germans arrive?” and “what did German mean in the 19th century?” Join us as we discuss the answers to these questions, helpful record sets, and more. Transcript Nicole (0s): This is Research Like a...
In recent years DNA has become an amazing tool for helping solve our genealogical brick walls. For example in Part 5 of this series the fact that Burkhard Schlag’s descendants were fairly close DNA matches to his FAN club’s (i.e. nieces and nephews) descendant’s, provided important clues for tracing Burkhard’s parents. However using DNA with recent German ancestors may be more challenging than with some other communities. Germans may have an advantage with their church...
In previous posts of this series, “Tracing Your 19th German Ancestors,” we began searching in America to learn everything possible about our ancestor before researching in Germany. In part 4 we learned steps for reading German-language records. In part 5 we will finally take a virtual trip to Germany. We will first show how to search Archion, the German website for Protestant records, in hopes of finding the baptism record for Burkhard Schlag (our example...
