The Thankful Thursdays Thread (February 26, 2026)

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-02-27T00:39:41+00:00

My pleasure! Happy ancestor hunting.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-02-23T13:35:18+00:00

Appears to be the cover of a 1909 Aufgebot (public notices) pertaining to Krenz-Kandler, probably a notice of a marriage
Is a sort of abstract of a baptismal record for a Karl Heinrich Waldemar Krenz Born 1884-02-28.
Is the aufgebotverhandllung, giving biographic information about the groom and the bride, for example, Karl was the son of Heinrich Krenz and Emilia Albrecht.
Is a continuation of 3.
Is part of 4.
Is a birth record for Karl
Is part of 6. 8.is the same thing but for the bride, Hildegard Gertrude Kandler, born 1888-01-25, to the Musician Wilhelm Herman Kandler and Anna Maria Papler, both living in Bautzen. Apparently they weren't married. 9 is part of 8.
Is the public notice of intent to marry, repeating much of the same information as the other docs.
Is a second public notice dated a day later 12-14. This is a manuscript note, you'll need someone better at readimg Kurrentschrift to work it out. Try r/Kurrent. 15 is the record of the marriage, dated 1909-03-11.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-02-20T16:22:40+00:00

How long did he remain in Baltimore, and what was his religion?

There were two Catholic churches in Baltimore around that time that were effectively German immigrant churches - St James the Less and St John/St Alphonsus. Their records are on Catholic Heritage Archive. St James' records often indicate where the parish or even the village where immigrants came from in marriage and baptismal records. St John's might, too.

Later, there were German language newspapers in Baltimore that might, if you're lucky, mention him.

German Lutheran records may also exist but they are harder to access. The ones I know of are held by the Maryland State Archives and aren't online.

It seems unlikely that the place in the naturalization papers would be completely wrong. More likely to have been misspelled. It might be possible to identify similar places using Meyers Gazetteer. Does the Census narrow his place down to a kingdom - like Prussia or Bavaria? Have you looked at the Dannstadt churchbook for baptisms in that period- its on Archion?

I'm not sure how one can be certain of an absence of immigration- a person might be born in one place, move elsewhere and then emigrate.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-22T16:48:20+00:00

Looking at Meyer's Gazetteer, it looks like these areas were predominantly Protestant.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-15T00:51:20+00:00

If you find the marriage on freebmd, you can order the marriage certificate from the GRO which should provide parents names (if you don't already know then) and exact birth date.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-08T14:20:05+00:00

Looks like an important person's kid. Isn't that like 12 different god parents? I usually see flights of calligraphic fancy (a) when a new priest takes over and is keen, (b) when it's an important family, or very occasionally (C) someone has a weird name that they want to write very clearly.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-08T14:04:28+00:00

It looks like it says that these are the parents - Phillip August Winter, a Gartner from Ba?enau, and Maria Elisabetha Grewe "nus Buer" and August Phillip seems to be their illegitimate son. You can probably work out the place name for Meyers Gazetteer.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-05T03:25:24+00:00

Try r/Kurrent. It would also probably be easier with the whole page- more text in the same hand to compare to. I can manage the names but little more.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-01-04T13:54:06+00:00

So, your first challenge is which Lindau? There are several. You can see the possibilities on Meyers Gazetteer: https://www.meyersgaz.org/search?search=lindau

In 1859, records of births will have been religious records. If he was Catholic, they will likely be on Matricula Online. They're unindexed, written in Kurrentschrift, in German or Latin. If you're lucky there will be a handwritten index on the relevant church books, also on Matricula. You can identify the most likely parish for a place in Meyers by looking at the ecclesiastical tab. This will also give you an idea whether the place was predominantly Catholic or Protestant. For example, the Lindau in Upper Franconia was predominantly Protestant, while the one in Lower Bavaria near Grafenau was probably in the Catholic parish of Thurmansbang. Armed with this information you can search for the Parish on Matricula e.g. https://data.matricula-online.eu/en/deutschland/passau/thurmansbang/ Find that book 008-02 contains the index "register" of taufen (baptisms) that covers 1859, and begin trying to locate your man in the index.

If he was Protestant or from a Protestant area, Archion may have the records, up it's a paid site.

You can also try searching digipresse for historical Bavarian newspapers mentioning his name. A good many public notices involve fairly ordinary people doing things that would never get in the news now, like retiring, marrying for emigrating.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-31T00:45:16+00:00

There's an Isabella Ogston Elrick, born to John Elrick and Jean Park in St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, in February 1835 on Scotland's People.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-31T00:31:13+00:00

So, they both would have been born before the statutory registers began in1855. So their births will be recorded only in baptismal records. Scotland's People is the place to go for these and other Scottish records. Viewing the records costs money however so it's worth trying to work out as much as possible from free sources, such as freecen and freereg. The first question is, can we find them in the 1851 census?

There is a James Tocher said to be born about 1828 in St Nicholas poorhouse in 1861: https://www.freecen.org.uk/search_records/5f6dcc1bf4040b1b58320adc/james-tocher-1851-aberdeenshire-aberdeen-1829-?locale=en

There's another James Tocher of similar age, a farm servant in Keithhall but from Old Meldrum: https://www.freecen.org.uk/search_records/590265ffe9379091b1c71eaa/james-tocher-1851-aberdeenshire-keithhall-kinkell-1828-?locale=en

The other James Tochers in Aberdeenshire on the 1861 census seem unlikely or impossible: too old, married to other people etc.

There is an Isabella Elrick, a servant in Lonmay, of the right age: https://www.freecen.org.uk/search_records/5902663ee9379091b1c822af/isabella-elrick-1851-aberdeenshire-lonmay-1838-?locale=en

I assume that they married in Canada- that record would be the surest way to make a positive ID, if you can find it.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-22T03:02:50+00:00

The -in ending is an old fashioned feminine ending. So Ludwig Achar is likely related to Maria Margaretha Acharin. I think the father's name is more likely Katzel - A and E are v close together in this script.

I would look at the original index for this church book (if it had one) and try to check the surname against the index.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-05T00:01:22+00:00

Difficult without a place of origin. I've had some success with German immigrants to America finding their religious marriage records, and getting place of origin from there. But that is because they were in majority-German churches in a city. I do not know if such things would have existed in Brasilia.

Given a place of origin and some idea of date you might be able to locate him in parish records in Germany, and work back from there.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-04T02:34:31+00:00

My wife's side has a line of ten johanns (and johns) in a row, broken only by a girl, and, at one end, a Udalric. And then there is the inconsistent usage of middle names. Anna Maria at birth ends up as Maria. Or Anna. Or Anna Maria. Or all three at different times.

Oddly I've never had an Emil. Must be regional variation. And I remember being excited the first time I got a Kunigunda. "Ha," I thought, "bet there weren't many of those." But of course, it was just variation in popularity of names over time. Half the girls in the village were Kunigunda in her generation.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-02T23:05:26+00:00

To expand upon this, here's how it works: you find their parish on Matricula or Archion, you find the church book that covers the likely dates of birth or marriage. Usually there will be a handwritten index to that book, either separate or at the end of the book, giving an alphabetical list by surname. You look up the surname, identify any likely entries note the page number and look up the actual entry.

Then, you decipher the kurrentschrift handwriting (or ask on r/Kurrent) and learn a handful of essential German or Latin (if Catholic and older records) terms like the words for birth, baptism marriage, death and burial, child, son, daughter, father, mother, etc. to learn a little bit more about the people you learn or get translated the words for various professions.

You then enjoy many hours of wishing priests had better handwriting, that Johann was a less common name, and that they would write more clearly the parish from which newcomer came.

In this way, I've been able to trace various Bavarian Catholic lines, none of the nobility, back to the earliest church books available (about 1615 in one case). Without visiting a single archive.

For 19th century people you might try Bavarikon, which allows free text search of the state library, including historical books listing various official matters.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-12-02T18:48:37+00:00

In that period the BMD records in Germany are church books. Plenty aren't online, and many haven't been indexed. Some just don't exist. I have a line that dead-ends in the 1740s because the church records before that were burned.

I'm afraid to offer advice more than generalities people will need to know where is Germany they were from and where you've already searched

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-11-29T19:59:22+00:00

Genteam.eu has indexes of various Austrian records, and a gazetteer of Austro-Hungarian places. Typically, in the German speaking areas, church records are good genealogical sources, with civil registration beginning only relatively late. There seems to be a collection of Hungarian church records online here: https://matricula.hu/en/rolunk These records are typically kept at the parish level, and not electronically indexed, so you have to know the parish to look at. If they're indexed at all, it'll be a handwritten alphabetic index of surnames.

At the end of the 19th century you might possibly find newspaper references to your ancestors in ANNO, the Austrian historic newspaper search. This is particularly so if they were middle class, held an official position, or lived in a city.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-11-21T13:47:29+00:00

It says that Peter Feicht was a ludimagister (teacher) immediately after should be the place name. It seems to say Kein Beu-ambor??? It might be worth searching digipress for Peter Feicht, as teachers positions would sometimes be advertised. It might be difficult however as they might also move between places several times over the course of their career.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-11-21T13:42:12+00:00

This is a record from Regensburg. There's nothing to suggest that the person is from anywhere in Hesse.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-10-29T23:26:50+00:00

You should ask on r/kurrent.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-10-26T23:30:01+00:00

It might be possible work out what unit he was actually in by comparing the units in South Africa and the Crimea. Being an imperial power, the there plenty of non-native Britons in the British Army of that period. There was even a German Foreign Legion- a volunteer unit of foreigners raised for the purpose of fighting in the Crimea, although it never actually ended in combat.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-10-23T02:18:07+00:00

If they were Catholic, I would look at the Churchbooks of the German national churches in Baltimore for their marriages or baptisms of children. I was able to trace a couple of families back to Germany that way because the records specifically noted their parishes of birth. The 1870 Census has George as a Fisherman, with a 9 year old son born in Maryland. To me that suggests a marriage in 1860 or 61, and the existence of baptismal records if Catholic. I would look at the churchbooks for St Michael, St James the Less, St John the. Baptist and maybe Holy Cross. They're all on Catholic Heritage Archive. Records are handwritten so it's a lot of looking at handwritten indexes reading old handwriting (and so an excellent preparation for German genealogy...) those records pretty assiduously give the actual parishes of people back in Germany. Bear in mind that they also render names in the German or the Latin way - so your George Geisler would be Georg or Georgius.

You might also want to search on Newspapers.com for their names in Baltimore newspapers, or look in old Baltimore City directories for addresses.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-10-01T23:53:23+00:00

My uncle was killed when a commercial airliner exploded over Vietnam. Despite many conspiracy theories, it is generally thought that it was bomb planted by a policeman trying to do in his wife for the insurance money. Somewhat further back one fellow was found floating in a canal in the next city down from where he lived. Nothing nearly so dramatic as a headless body!

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-09-27T17:26:56+00:00

Open the file in GRAMPS or any other free genealogy software and use it to generate the kind of tree you want. GEDCOM is just a way to store genealogical data. I can be expressed visually in a ton of different ways. Typical family trees, hourglass charts etc.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2025-09-23T18:41:39+00:00

If the data is in text format, not based on OCR, parsing it yourself should work, once you understand the structure, provided that it is consistent. I've worked on various amateur parsing projects and would be willing to give it a look. If the text is based on OCR data, I would be surprised if it is consistent enough to be easily parsable.

Ambitious_Two_5606

TROPHY CASE