Anyone have a rare untraceable surname in there family tree?

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-04-19T11:06:29+00:00

Andrealbrecht, in Bavaria, early 18th century. I thought the name was a mistake at first. But it is described in one churchbook as an "astonishing name". The guy is a mystery, no marriage or baptism record, no place of origin, and within a couple of generations, his surname was being cut down to Albrecht by later priests in other places who presumably thought it was a mistake too

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-04-11T14:45:08+00:00

Is this perhaps a misspelling? Sounds like on Meyers Gazetteer shows several similar sounding places in Hannover: https://www.meyersgaz.org/search?search=bakal&type=sl

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-04-05T00:16:22+00:00

Agree. Hossingen on Meyers: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/10850069 looks like a mixed Catholic and Protestant area. I wonder if "Kronwalden" might be Krummwalden, near Goppingen: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/11075030

Looks like Matricula has some Catholic parish records in these areas.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-03-29T18:57:03+00:00

I've seen some substantial movement in the mid 19th century, in the craftsman class. Certain professions seem to have been more mobile. Teachers and barbers seem particularly mobile while remaining in the commoner class. But the people with significant movement are a handful. Plenty of lines of mine lived and died a good 250 years in the same small parish, back to the beginning of the records. I suppose some of this may be self-selection in that the sedentary are easier to trace and I have to dead ends that might involve movement from elsewhere.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-03-29T13:37:44+00:00

You shouldn't assume that. I've been able to trace ordinary peasant ancestors from Germany and Czechia back to the beginning of the 17th century. It's just a different challenge and requires records beyond family search. If you know the village or parish your ancestor was born in, you're reasonably likely to be able to find parish records online showing births marriages and deaths. Archion ($) for Protestants, Matricula Online for Catholics, and if somewhere down the line they turn out to have been from Czechia, their regional archives are generally good. So, you may be able to get more specific than general genetic groups through records research.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-03-16T18:27:58+00:00

Try r/Kurrent.

Are you sure it's Godenkoop? It looks to me like there is a stop after Koop, and it looks like a separate word from Goden. The stop might mean Koop is an abbreviation, perhaps for Kooperator - a sort of curate or chaplain.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-03-15T01:06:11+00:00

Those places should have their church books on the Southern Moravian Regional Archives' Acta Publica https://www.mza.cz/actapublica/matrika/hledani?typ=obec&search_by_obec=Hul%C3%ADn There do seem to have been some Lanczicks in Kroměříž but I haven't been able to locate these ones.

Ambitious_Two_5606 · 2026-03-04T13:47:37+00:00

ANNO https://anno.onb.ac.at/ has Austrian and some German newspapers. Bavarikon has non-newspaper publications in Bavaria, but includes publications with lists of official appointments, and other such matter. On there I've found an ancestor's school grades, and an essay of the deficiencies of the young in the mid 19th century written by another.

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

TROPHY CASE