I'm looking for the parents names of Frank Michalke born Steinforth, West Prussia 4 Mar 1868

Question

He immigrated to the US in 1892 aboard the Polynesia.  He died in Greeley, Colorado in 1961

Answer 1

Steinforth, today Trzyniec, was in the county of Schlochau. Records for the time in question for you would be church books. For protestants, LDS has microfilmed a small number of records: Evangelische Kirche Steinforth (Kr. Schlochau). Kirchenbuchduplikat, 1843-1856. microfilmed by LDS. I don't know whether these would be accessible through FamilySearch today. Other records exist, but to my knowledge not digitized: Births starting from 1739 microfilmed at the Zentralstelle für Genealogie Leipzig http://www.archiv.sachsen.de/6319.htm and original church books at Archiwum Państwowe w Szczecinie http://www.szczecin.ap.gov.pl/

Comments

Thank you for your answer.  I will look in the Kirchenbuchduplikat 1843-1856 for other family members, but Frank was born after these records.  I looked on the two sites you mentioned and with Google Translate (which isn't always helpful) could not understand how to access the records.  It appears these are not digitized. Rather than travel to Germany/Poland is there a way to access these records that you know of?  Are there wikitree members living in those countries that will search for me?  Thanks!

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Sources are not digitized. The Zentralstelle für Genealogie says they may be able to do research for people who are too far away to do research personally but only if it doesn't take more than 1 hour, and they would charge for it. As for the Polish archive, maybe you can contact one of our Polish language volunteers (http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Language_volunteers) to see if they can help you with the website. I'm not speaking Polish myself.