Message from Kathy,
Hello from Germany! Time has slipped by so fast that I find I didn't get all of my To-Do list done before I had to leave, this newsletter being one of them. Weather is gorgeous here today, May flowers are blooming and the brilliant yellow of the rapeseed fields make for a stunning quilt-like backdrop to the scenery.
In this issue, we pass along some ideas for research in Alsace Lorraine area of France. If you have seen ancestors mention sometimes they are from France, sometimes Germany it is a good chance they could be from this area in what is now France. Perhaps some of the ideas will help you find your hometowns and you can join us on our September Baden tour, we are only across the Rhine river from Alsace on this tour!
Progress is being made on a couple 2019 tours, see below. We are working on a couple more so if you have an idea let us know! Time to get moving, have to meet with our Northwest Germany group this afternoon! Watch for updates on our adventures on our Facebook page.
Until next time!
Kathy
Genealetter in PDF
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SPOTLIGHT: RESEARCHING ALSACE & LORRAINE
As the French began to exercise more and more control over Alsace and Lorraine, the history of these two territories became more and more the history of France. King Henry IV of France who had been raised a Protestant converted to Catholicism and became King of France in 1598. On April 13,
Because of the long, turbulent history of these regions, family history researchers face several distinct problems and opportunities. We will consider the history of the region and how it impacts genealogical research. 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted religious freedom to his realm. The law ended the religious conflicts in the country and was in effect for 87 years. On October 18, 1685, King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the Edict of Nantes. Suddenly, Protestants were outlawed, and their churches are forbidden to keep records. This caused much strife across France as Protestant Huguenots fled as refugees to more hospitable lands. Alsace and Lorraine were largely ignored in this repression, however. The ability of Protestant churches to function and keep records means that many Protestant records in Alsace and Lorraine survived intact and are available to research today.
Alsace and Lorraine were both far from the centers of action in the French revolution (1789–1799). During this period, France developed a system of civil registration for births, marriages, and deaths that are still in effect today. Alsace and Lorraine were also affected by the Revolutionary Calendar. The calendar, which replaced the Gregorian Calendar, was established in October 1793 and began with the day the Republic was proclaimed. Thus Day 1 of Year I was equivalent to September 22, 1792, but no records used it until Year II. The calendar divided the year into 12 months, each consisting of three weeks or decades of 10 days each. The extra five days (or six in a leap year) were added at the end of the year as special holidays celebrating the ideals of the revolution. Each of the 12 months was given a name, suggestive of the time of year.
Because the calendar was created by the state it was used on all civil records. It was not widely popular, as it gave only one day of rest in 10, unlike the Gregorian week that gave one day in seven. It also caused confusion and created difficulties in communicating with the rest of Europe. Napoleon abandoned the calendar on January 1, 1804 (or in the Year XII by its own reckoning). The calendar resurfaced during the period of the Commune of Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, but only in Paris and its immediate environs.
The Franco—Prussian War (1870–1871) was an unmitigated catastrophe for France. Emperor Napoleon III was captured, and Paris was under siege. The treaty ending the war was devastating. Bismarck and the Prussians took most of Alsace and about a quarter of Lorraine. Theoretically, the goal of taking the territory was to place the German speakers of Alsace and Lorraine in the German Empire.
The German territory became known as the Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen (Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine). The Kaiser was the governor of the territory. During this period, the civil records were kept, but in German instead of French.
Alsace and Lorraine in the 20th Century
The defeat of Germany in World War I brought new difficulties to Alsace and Lorraine. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany ceded the territories back to France.
Germans who had settled in the area between 1871 and the end of the war were expelled. Efforts were made to suppress the German language. Germany handed the civil records back to France and recordkeeping resumed in French. Oberelsaß became Department Haut-Rhin and Unterelsaß became Department Bas-Rhin. Lothringen became Department Moselle. The area became collectively known as Alsace-Moselle.
The Second World War brought more chaos and disruption to the region. Alsace and Lorraine were annexed as part of the German Reich by Hitler. Alsace was merged with Baden and Lorraine with Saarland.
At the close of the war, France regained the territories and began once again the process of assimilating them into France.
Finding your ancestors in Alsace and Lorraine
If you find an ancestor listed in 1850, 1860, 1870, 1920, 1930, and 1940 census with a birthplace of France, but in 1880, 1900, and 1910 with a birthplace of Germany, you have almost certainly identified an ancestor from the Alsace-Moselle area. You should then determine his or her specific town or village of origin.
Check Emigration Indexes and Books. (see names of books/links from the original source)
The French departmental archives are in the process of digitizing records and making them available online. At this writing, the Department Bas-Rhin has digitized the Civil Registrations and the Parish Registers (from before 1792), and the Department Haut Rhin has digitized the civil registrations. The Department Moselle has digitized parish registers and the ten-year indexes to civil registrations. Records might also be available through FamilySearch.org. (see links)
Because Alsace-Moselle was part of the German Empire in 1912, its towns and villages were included in the Meyers Orts-und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs (commonly referred to as the Meyers-Orts). The Meyers-Orts has been digitized and translated online. The record will indicate the “Standesamt”— the location of the civil register office where ancestral records might be held.
Once you have gone back to 1792, you will have to move into church records. Finding the church may require some additional work. Your ancestor’s town may have been a part of a parish in a neighboring community. Kevan M. Hansen’s Map Guide to German Parish Registers offers the best way to learn what towns or villages comprise a parish. Alsace Moselle is included in these because the areas were, for a time, part of the German Empire.
“Alsace-Lorraine, Germany, French Citizenship Declarations ( Optants), 1872.” Ancestry.com. Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Database online.
Websites and Databases
Archives départementales de la Moselle. “Archives en ligne.” http://www.archives57.com/index.php/ recherches/archives-en-ligne
Archives départmentales de Meurthe-et-Moselle. “Archives en ligne.”
http://www.archives.meurthe-et-moselle.fr/fr/ archives-en-ligne.html.
Archives départmentales de la Meuse. “Recherche.” http:// archives.meuse.fr/search/home.
Archives Départmetnales Des Vosges. “Recherche en ligne.” http://archives.vosges.fr/.
Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. “Rechercher.” http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/
Archives départmentales du Haut-Rhin. “Archives départmentales du Haut-Rhin.” http://www.archives.hautrhin.fr/.
FamilySearch.org. http://www.familysearch.org.
Source information is from the St. Louis County Library publication “Pastports." For complete article with more information and bibliography sources, see HERE.
The area of Alsace-Lorraine is very convenient on our Baden tour in September. If you have questions on places your ancestor came from in Alsace please get in touch and let us see how we can help you visit or research there.
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Genealogy Research Tip – Pool Resources
Genealogy isn’t generally very expensive (as hobbies go!), but you can still save money (and shelf space) by pooling your resources with other genealogists. Get together and figure out which genealogical societies you’d like to join and which publications you’d like to subscribe to, then divvy them up between five or six people. You can then meet every month or two to trade magazines and journals, and sort out how to best utilize the benefits of membership, such as sending queries, getting discounts on publications and borrowing books from society libraries.
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Genealogy Pages on You may find a page for your county or State that has the answer to your brick wall.
Who Do You Think You Are on TLC returns May 21st. See whose stories will be revealed.
Ireland - Guinness Archive has preserved records and artifacts, dating from 1759, including photos
THIS AND THAT: Facebook ,and 20,000 individual personnel records of past employees giving a glimpse into the history of St. James's Gate and Guinness' staff.
10 Tips for Finding Your Military Ancestor
New archived records from around the world are published on FamilySearch every week to help you find your ancestors. This week, the new additions include 1.1 million records from Germany (Bavaria), plus more from Australia, Belgium, Hungary, Peru, and Russia. READ HERE.
Florida Marriages, 1830-1993 on Family Search - Index and Images.
How to Google Search for Possible Words (Speak Google's Language Series) Podcast
How to Find Old Family Photos & More in Newspapers
See info below about our 2019 Northern Ireland tour: Did you know landed estate papers (of which the Public Record Office in Belfast has one of the best collections in the British Isles) sometimes contain the names of the tenants showing the land they farmed? These are just one of the types of records the course participants can access during their time in the archives with our research team. Other sources which are not yet online include workhouse registers and many church records.
Palatinate Online on Archion.de
All released church records of the Protestant Lutheran Church of the Palatinate are available online!
Rejoice with us! Around 3600 church records of the Protestant Lutheran Church of the Palatinate are researchable online now. Together with the church records, that are stored at Landesarchiv Speyer, the area of the State Church of Palatinate is almost completely covered. The central archive also endeavors to obtain approval from the political municipality to put the church records in Archion that are lying in city archives, registry offices or mayoralties. At the end of each calendar year, the church records that are not in a retention period anymore are added to Archion and released for use.
(You can research your protestant ancestors ahead of time and join us on our Sept. Heart of Germany tour to visit the places the documents tell of).
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UPCOMING TOURS: For those of you who may be new to the newsletter I just wanted to remind you that our small group tours usually consist of 10-16 people, we stay in one home base town (on German trips) and travel out on day trips by train. There are free days where you go to visit your hometowns, where we have made a contact for you. If you would like to find out more please contact me, Kathy @ info@familytreetours.com
2018
Remember that we do our best to get people to as many hometowns as possible and what we suggest is if your (sourced) hometown is within a 2-3 hour train ride from our home base village than that is a good tour for you BUT we also can help you get a bit further by using two free days back to back and spend the night* in this further away area so you have more time in your home villages. Plus if you have hometowns in one of these areas proposed but also have hometowns in another part of Germany, we often have people extend their tour for a few days and travel to the other area, where we will also make contacts for you.
Northwest, Germany - May 5 – 15, 2018
$2699.00 pp/dbl $200. single supplement
Join Family Tree Tours on our exciting exploration of Northwest Germany, where thousands of Germans emigrated from in the 19th century. Were your ancestors one of them? Spend 11 days traveling back in time to see the places they lived and worked. Learn more about the history of the area and why they left. Plus expert help in helping you visit your ancestral hometowns.
Bavaria, Germany – May 26 – June 5, 2018
$2699.00 pp/dbl l $200.00 single supplement
Enchanting medieval and picturesque villages and traditional wine villages with friendly festivals and regional specialties. Join us as we explore regions in Bavaria. We home base in the historical Würzburg and make day trips out to learn more about our Bavarian ancestor’s life. Day trips include tour of living history museum, Nuremberg Archives, Rothenburg ob der Tauber but most importantly free days to visit your ancestral hometowns.
Heart of Germany Tour - September 8–18 (1 room available)
$2750.00 pp/dbl l $200.00 single supplement
What is more synonymous with Germany than the Rhine River? We indulge ourselves with the Rhine and the history of the area staying in its quaint historic town of Speyer. Home to several archives and accessible to reach hometowns in Rhineland-Pfalz, northern Baden-Württemberg, northern Alsace-Lorraine and parts of Hesse, we will discover all these areas have to offer.
Baden-Württemberg, Germany - September 29 – Oct 9, 2018 (rooms available)
$2599.00 pp/dbl l $200.00 single supplement
Some of the highlights of this trip will include a tour of the Freiburg Archives, historical lectures, and a day trip to beautiful Lake Constance & Mainau Island. Tour of a living history museum and Black Forest traditional costume museum. Free days to visit ancestral hometowns.
*additional cost
2019
Plans are coming along for an Irish Research/Heritage tour in 2019. We are thinking of the first couple weeks of July 2019. We will spend a few days at a local Belfast research facility (pre-trip initial assessment of your research, Irish genealogy classes and assisted research) plus visits to Ulster American Folk park, a famine museum, castles, Titanic museum, free days to visit hometowns (if known) but this trip is geared to helping you research in Northern Ireland and to get to know the area your ancestor’s hailed from. We hope to do this for Southern Ireland in the future.
May 29 – June 8, 2019
Southwest Baden Tour - Even if you don’t have ancestors from Baden-Wuerttemberg this trip will be a fun trip to enjoy some German “gemutlichkeit”. Join us as we celebrate with the village of Bötzingen their 1250th anniversary. A weekend full of festivities, an exhibit on Emigration in the 19th century, Strassenfest (street party), tour of vineyards with wine tasting. We also will visit a living history museum, historical tour in Freiburg, before heading over into Alsace, France to visit the charming Colmar (home to Little Venice) and a bus ride through the Alsatian countryside with stops in picturesque villages for great food and wine tastings. More info on this tour coming soon. We are looking for descendants of these family names: Ambs, Baumeier, Brodbeck, Enderlin, Gruen (Green), Jenne, Keller, Kessler, Kraus, Lay, Moll, Rebstock, Scheffel, Schmidt, Siegstein, Strubinger, Zimmerlin are just a few.
Another idea we have had and want to know about interest would be a German Genealogy Rhine River cruise on Viking. We would provide help with your German research during the cruise and throughout the tour stops we would arrange visits to local archives, lectures from German expert researchers and historians, we also would provide expert help in visiting ancestral hometowns before or after the cruise. Anyone interested in this?
I also had a request from a reader if anyone would be interested in these areas of Poland so that we could get a small group tour to this area. PIELGYZMKA, POLAND (click for map) email if you have a hometown in this general area. info@familytreetours.com I am building a map of submitted towns in hopes of a tour to Poland some day, so send in your hometowns.
We are open to any ideas you may have also so please get in touch.
OTHER HERITAGE TOURS
We can help you with Irish & Italian heritage tours, so inquire if these are places you want to go.
UPCOMING EVENTS FOR FAMILY TREE TOURS
May 2018 - Northwest Germany & Bavaria Germany tours.
I also am working with a German Author, Astrid Adler, on her upcoming book tour in October 2018. Here are some of the places she will be speaking on German Emigration, she also will have books for sale.
USA Lecture Tour 2018: Emigration from the German Perspective (10/18/2018 - 10/31/2018)
Places of the Tour: Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin
10/18/2018, 6:30 pm: Washington County Historical Society, Inc., West Bend, WI
10/19/2018, 1:00 pm: Waukesha County Genealogical Society, Waukesha, WI
10/22/2018: reserved, Chicago
10/23/2018, 6:30 pm: Public Library Beloit, WI/German Interest Group Janesville, WI
10/24/2018, 5:00 pm: German American Heritage Center Davenport, IA
10/27/2018, 1:00 pm: Belleville Public Library, Belleville, IL
10/28/2018, 1:00 pm: Washington Historical Society, Washington, MO
10/29/2018, 6:30 pm: Morrison-Talbott Library, Waterloo, IL
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Travel Tips:
What Not to Wear in an Airport Security Line
A couple of ideas to help speed you through airport security lines:
Get Organized
In addition to having your boarding pass and ID on hand to show the security agent, pack the items you'll need to take out quickly—like your laptop and your zip-top bag of liquids—in an easy-to-grab spot at the top of your carry-on bag. (Unless you're carrying a checkpoint-friendly laptop bag, you'll have to take your computer out of your luggage and put it in a bin for screening.)
This one may seem obvious, yet every airport security line appears to have some travelers who scramble to fish out laptops and zip-tops the moment they step up to the X-ray machine. Don't be that guy.
Pack Well
Don't pack so much in your bag that you must sit on it to get it closed. If the TSA elects to open your bag, you'll waste time (and hold up the security line) gathering the overflowing contents and trying to get that zipper closed as a crowd of impatient passengers looks on.
An organized bag will cause less confusion when going through the X-ray scanner, too. A mess of wires and bundled clothes is more likely to get flagged for extra screening than a bag with folded, neatly stacked items. The TSA recommends that travelers pack items in layers and place "shoes, boots, sneakers, and other footwear on top of other contents in your luggage." The agency also advises, "Don't stack piles of books or documents on top of each other; spread them out within your baggage" to facilitate
X-ray scanning.
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