Articles by Michele Simmons Lewis

Learning About German Compiled Sources

Learning About German Compiled Sources

  By Michele Simmons Lewis,CG,  student   Ready to continue your advanced German courses with The National Institute for Genealogical Studies? German: Compiled Sources is  available and I just completed it. Any genealogy class will tell you that compiled sources aren’t as good as original records and we should not use them for anything more than a clue. Though this is usually the case, it is less so when dealing with German compiled sources. The author of this course, Kory Meyerink, BS, MLS, AG, FUGA, explains the pitfalls of compiled sources but also explains why German compiled sources are more reliable than their US counterparts. I was born in Germany and I can tell you that part of the reason this is true is that Germans are a disciplined and ordered people. It is an important part of their culture. “Ordnung muss sein!” (There must be order!). They have been keeping meticulous parish and civil records for centuries. They have officially recognized lineage book collections that began publication in the mid-1800s. They have special nobility lineage books that were first published in the mid-1700s. These books are based on records that may or may not exist today. Some of these German compiled sources will be your best evidence. Researchers in Germany, though they may not source their findings the same way as what is expected here in the US, produce lineages and biographies that are normally sound and reliable. They just can’t help themselves, it is in their DNA. What…

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More About the Course German: Civil Registration Records

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student In the course German: Civil Registration Records, the first thing you will learn is what types of civil records the German-speaking countries generate and where you can find them. Finding them is not as easy as it sounds. Every local jurisdiction has its own Standesamt (civil registry office). You have to know exactly where your ancestor lived to find his/her records. Since I had already taken the German: Locating Places in Germany course this was familiar territory. German gazetteers like Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs will help you find the correct jurisdiction. Civil registration started early on, as early as 1792 in some places, so this is a great source for birth , marriage, and death certificates (Geburtsurkunden, Heiratsurkunden und Sterbeurkunden). In the second module of this course you learn what sort of information you can expect to find in these records. German civil records are fairly uniform across the different jurisdictions and contain a lot of genealogical data. Many Standesamts used typeset, fill-in-the blank forms which usually makes them easier to read than church records of the same time period. Many of Germany’s civil records have been microfilmed by the Family History Library (FHL). The FHL’s FamilySearch website is starting to upload some of these microfilms online as they are being digitized (check the Records collection for Germany). Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what you see on FamilySearch is all there is. You must also check the FamilySearch Catalog. You…

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German: Record Repositories

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student I am really moving along through the German courses. I just finished German: Record Repositories. This course was not as intense as my last one, German: Reading the Records, but still very informative. I thought I knew how to navigate the Family History Library (FHL) catalog pretty well but when it comes to the German microfilms it turns out I didn’t know as much as I thought. There are several categories of films I had not paid any attention to because I didn’t think they were of any value.  One of those is the Inventories. The Inventories microfilms tell you what records actually exist. If you can’t find something, is it because it hasn’t been microfilmed or is it because those records were destroyed in World War II?  Knowing the answer to that question will save you a lot of time. Module 1 and 2 of the course outlines everything you need to know about what the FHL has and doesn’t have. Why the emphasis on the FHL?  Because the FHL went to Germany and filmed countless church and civil records and their collection is second to none. Module  3 switches to the German Archives. When you say German Archives you aren’t talking about one entity. Germany has many archives. There are civil archives and there are church archives. There are archives at several different jurisdictional levels. There is a lot to know. You need to be familiar with how to navigate the various inventories…

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Reading German Records

  By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student German: Reading the Records  is my favorite German course from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies so far. The first half of this course concentrates on teaching you how to write in the old German script. Actually forming the letters over and over again gets those letter shapes in your brain and you have a much easier time recognizing them when you are reading documents. The second half of the course is all about reading real records. There is a required book for this course, Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents by Roger P. Minert. This is an excellent book and has countless examples of documents along with transliterations and translations. Each document is fully analyzed pointing out certain things you need to be watching for such as common abbreviations and common phrases. This is one of those books you will want to read from cover to cover. There is a little surprise in the class. German documents aren’t always written in German. You also have to learn how to read Latin and French. I happen to love languages so I was pretty happy to see these assignments. Now I have even more flexibility and these skills will help me in other areas, not just with German records. This isn’t an easy course. The assignments include documents that look like they were written by a second-grader. (Did you think that only happened with English records?)  There are faded documents and some have the words cut off…

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German: Church Records

Bu Michele Simmons Lewis, Student Well that’s embarrassing. I just took the final exam for the German: Church Records course. I am not going to tell you what my score but I will tell you that this has been the hardest course (and exam) so far. I definitely need to go back over the material again. The text that accompanies this course is excellent. As a matter of fact, not only do you get the regular course materials but you also get German Church Books: Beyond the Basics by Kenneth L. Smith. There are 239 pages of text for this course. When examining church registers you can’t just skim through them looking for familiar names. This is a mistake that I have made in the past. You have to analyze every baptism, every marriage, and every death entry for the period of time in question and build all of the family groups. This is the only way you will be able to separate everyone out correctly. Sometimes the entry will have a first name and sometimes it will have a middle name or even a second middle name. At first glance you might think you are dealing with several people when you are really only dealing with one. The reverse can happen as well. “Anna” might be three different people and not just one. For the final exam, you are given a parish register with baptisms, marriages, and deaths. You have to put everyone in their proper family group after…

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