Category: German Genealogy Tips

On one of my previous posts, a commenter named “Franz” mentioned a very helpful tip: Germans often had several given names. Many times, German individuals’ “first names” were very common: Johann or Hans or Anna or Martha. In order to differentiate themselves, they would go by one of their less common middle names: Balthasar, Karl, […]

In pre-20th century Germany, individuals usually married others who lived nearby, but every so often, a man and a wife from different towns were united in marriage. When this happened, the woman usually went to live with the man’s family, and rarely the other way around. There are a few reasons for this: If a […]

If you’d like to see and use actual, physical images of genealogical records from Germany, many of them are available for completely free on FamilySearch.org. There are far more records on FamilySearch than the handful of transcribed/indexed records you get through regular the “search” function. To explore all that FamilySearch has to offer, you will need […]

Scenario: Your ancestor gives an approximate birth year of 1870 for himself in all of the censuses during his adulthood. You find a birth certificate that matches him in every detail, but the birth certificate implies he is born in 1861. Can this possibly be him? The answer: Yes, it can be. Don’t get too […]

When researching German records, you will often see an individual’s religion listed as “evangelisch” or “evangelische”. This is an umbrella term that describes most of the Protestant denominations after the Reformation. In Germany, this term was more likely to describe a church with Lutheran beliefs, and in Switzerland, this term was more likely to describe […]

Don’t get tripped up by this when researching your German ancestors. Many times, German females would have “-in” added to their surnames. Thus, a woman with the last name of Schmidt might have sometimes been called “Schmidtin”. A woman with the last name of Mueller might have sometimes been called “Muellerin”. Their actual surname was […]

I got a fun little treat in my email inbox last night from Ancestry.com — a printable guide to reading German civil registrations (government records of births, marriages, and deaths). I have personally had a lot of practice reading these, but I am so glad that Ancestry.com is sending these guides out to researchers. Researching […]

One thing you must learn quickly, when doing genealogy in Germany, is that there are multiple towns with the same exact name. Often there can be multiple towns in the same province with the same name, and sometimes there are multiple towns even in the same county with the same name. Some towns have the […]

Today’s German genealogy tip of the day is this: Germans almost always chain-migrated to America. If you have a German immigrant ancestor, bet on the fact that several of their close family members also immigrated to America, probably both before and after your ancestor. Readjusting to a new country, a new way of life, and […]