Tuesday, July 27, 2010

German Research Tools

The Library owns the following two books, which are indispensable to German genealogical research, and were recently reviewed by The Genealogical Publishing Co. in its newsletter, Genealogy Pointers:

Ancestors in German Archives R929.343 ANC GENEALOGY

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs R914.3003 MEY GENEALOGY v. 1-3

The key to German genealogical research is to locate birth, marriage, death, and immigration records. The Brigham Young University German Immigrant Ancestors Project identified records in more than 2,000 German archives for emigrants, and created Internet-accessible databases describing their birthplaces, occupations, spouses, and children. Ancestors in German Archives is the result of this project.

It describes each archive in terms of its jurisdictions, records, and services. Vital records, religious records, military records, emigration records, passport records, censuses, and town and county records are included, along with guides or inventories to the collections.

To determine which archives today have jurisdiction over the records that were created by church or state institutions, use the Locality Inde to identify every town with an archive, no matter what kind.

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs was published at the peak of German immigration to the United States. Serious German research begins with this massive gazetteer, which describes approximately 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, and dwelling places in the German Empire prior to World War I. The facts presented about these localities enable researchers to determine the whereabouts of civil, religious, court, and military records.

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