I need help getting past my ggrandfather b-1850 Vienna Austria

Question

 I have been at this genealogy thing for a few years and have successfully gone all the way back to the 1400's or so on my mom's Paternal grand mother's side). However I have hit a difficult brick wall with both my Maternal Grandfather's side as well as a dead end with my father's family. I hope you can help.

I have done my dna and can see my father's mother and a bit of her extended family, nor I or my cousins see any of our Surname in DNA matches. 

I know my father is my biological father because of the matches that match his mother. His father Jacob Scheer was born Feb 21 1887 Metnitz (Russia occupied at the time) now Austria. My great grandfather, Jakob Scheer born Dec 25 1850 Vienna Austria. I cannot find anything except the find a grave/death dates. 
My grandfather and his siblings were orphaned in 1904 (father Jakob Died) Mother Rosina died 1903. Apparently the church records were lost in a fire (Saskatchewan). I am thinking maybe Jakob (sr) was orphaned in Vienna Austria and took on a family's name that took him in.

Sorry for the long message, do you know where I should go from here? Or would you know if anyone would be able to help? Thank you for any help you can offer.

Thank you

I guess I am looking to find out who I really am.

Connie Scheer

Answer 1

Many church records for Vienna are online that include the time period of your query. Most of the records are Catholic, as that was the predominate religion in Austria. There are some evangelical (Lutheran) but not nearly as much. Some Jewish records are available as well.

However, Vienna was (and is) a very large city. Vienna is divided into several districts, and each district has numerous parishes. This potentially means a lot of registers to search through, but many are indexed, so the task is not quite so bad. It is very helpful to know what district your ancestor lived as your search becomes somewhat less extensive.

Take a look at the ICARUS website for the church records. see http://data.matricula-online.eu/en/ the website is free.

The Genteam.at website, for Austrian research, has numerous indexes for Vienna, including some Jewish indexes. This is also a free site, but you need to register.

These sites are in German and English and are easy to use.

Best of luck in your research.

Comments

Thank you for your help, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Answer 2

(I had to copy-and-paste your post into a text editor to read it: the text is not wrapping for some reason.)

The only Metnitz I can find is in Carinthia (Kärnten in German), which to the best of my knowledge has never been "Russia occupied", especially not in the peaceful 1880s. Do you have a reason to think your grandfather was born in some other town with the same name?

Come to think of it, what is your source for his birthdate and place? The church registers for Metnitz (and for Vienna) are on Matricula Online, and I can find no Jakob baptised in February 1887 in them. (In fact, I paged through 1886-1890, and none of the Jakobs I found can be your grandfather.)

There's no way I'm paging through anything in Vienna (waaay too many churches!), but a lot of it is indexed and searchable on GenTeam (registration required, but it's free). However, it's not coughing up a Jakob Scheer in 1850. Again, what's your source for this date, place, and name?

Comments

 I am adding the wiki information on Metnitz Austria-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metnitz . The confusion may be something to do with the "reinsurance treaty" between Germany and Russia.

I have found census records 1901, as well as departure and passenger lists.

Thank you for the links.