You’re Not On Your Own Tracing Your German Genealogy
Many thousands delight in the hobby and history of their family’s genealogies. In America, a land of immigrants, this search can take them through many countries and cultures. If you know what country your ancestors were from, then you are well on your way to climbing your family tree. If you have German genealogy to climb, you are in luck, more so than at any other time in history. There are many websites, hobbyist genealogists and German genealogy societies willing to help you out. Hopefully, then, you could help them or any other genealogists out with any information you might know.
No Monopoly
One of the attractive aspects of the genealogy hobby is that no one person or group has the sole monopoly of information. Everyone pretty much has to share what they’ve learned with everyone else. This means many gaps in family history trees can be filled because of mutual information sharing. With German genealogy, this is even more apparent. While you might want to discover about your ancestors, those you may be related to in Germany are trying to find out about those who left for America.
Get That Mouse Clicking
The best (and most cost efficient) place to begin tracing your German roots is online. Just type “German genealogy” in your favorite search engine, and a whole virtual world of resources come to your fingertips. One of the best places to start is The German Heritage and Genealogy Home Page http://www.daddezio.com/germgen.html, which includes a huge database of German family coat of arms, mourning cards and the New England Naturalization Petitions, which includes the names of a lot of German immigrants.
You can also use the web to find out other information about German genealogy and the times your ancestors lived. Despite the terrible ravages of two World Wars, some records still survive the centuries. These public genealogy records have been mostly transcribed to online sites. You can search marriage certificates, cemeteries for the resting places of your forbears, and the meticulous military records that survived the World Wars.
Other resources about German genealogy that can be found on the web include, believe it or not, online auctions such as eBay. They often have old journals or, even more importantly, family Bibles for sale. The Family Bible was, for centuries, the main record of European and American families. Often, the two or more blank front pages were the only pieces of blank paper in the home.
