Let’s say you are looking for the German origin of one of your ancestors, and you’ve exhausted your English-language sources. You are familiar with German genealogical words and phrases because you own a copy of Ernest Thode’s German-English Genealogical Dictionary. You’re reasonably confident that the missing ancestor came to the U.S. from Berlin, so what[…]Read more
Tag: German Genealogy
“The Germans and Germany,” by Angus Baxter (Part One)
[This article is condensed from the chapter by the same name in the 5th Edition of Mr. Baxter’s classic how-to book, In Search of Your German Roots. Readers should note that, in the interest of brevity, a number of tables in the book which describe the migration and distribution of the German population and the[…]Read more
“Pennsylvania-German Records,” by Don Yoder
(The following article is excerpted from Professor Yoder’s Introduction to the three-volume collection, Pennsylvania German Church Records of Births, Marriages, Burials, Etc. From the Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings and Addresses ) We owe the translations of German church registers in these three volumes to the far-reaching historical and genealogical research program of the Pennsylvania German Society. The[…]Read more
Angus Baxter & Ernest Thode: One-Two-Three Punch for German Researchers
In recent issues of “Genealogy Pointers,” we have highlighted Angus Baxter’s In Search of Your German Roots. Fifth Edition. Besides Baxter’s description of German history’s impact on its genealogy sources, equally informative chapters in the Fifth Edition cover German genealogy websites, German-Jewish records, the German records of the LDS Church, the archives of Germanic genealogy,[…]Read more
German Research Incomplete without Historic German Newspapers Online
Since most digitized German papers are fully searchable, Ernest Thode’s revised guide to these newspapers, indicating newspaper title, place of publication, date range, and website, is an unprecedented key to a mother lode of information found in German-language papers. As the author explains below: “Few historic German newspapers have been digitized until the past few[…]Read more
“The Germans and Germany,” by Angus Baxter (Part Two)
[The second part of this article is condensed from the chapter by the same name in the 5th Edition of Mr. Baxter’s classic how-to book, In Search of Your German Roots. Readers should note that, in the interest of brevity, a number of tables in the book which describe the migration and distribution of the[…]Read more
Ernest Thode’s German-English Genealogical Dictionary Essential for Understanding German Documents
If tracing your German origins requires that you read documents written in German—if you plan to research ones from the 19th-century or earlier it’s a virtual certainty you will—Ernest Thode’s classic dictionary is one book you should own. This book is designed for the family researcher who has little or no knowledge of German but[…]Read more