How to break down your German immigrant brick wall

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Research in country of immigration

Before "crossing the pond" it's essential to do "your homework" in the country your German ancestor went to. Even if his/her own obvious records might reveal nothing more than "Germany" or "Prussia" or some other state name, there might be other ways to figure out the essential place name, you are going to need for your research journey to the country of origin.

Also collateral research might help, which means research on persons who are not direct ancestors but are known or at least suspected to be related. If you are unable to locate records identifying the place of origin for your direct ancestor, you may be able to find records containing that information for their siblings, cousins, or neighbors.

The ideal candidates would be siblings, as they are most likely to have the same parents and birthplace, but often people from the same locale would form close bonds in their new country, so don't hesitate to research someone with a different last name if the records make it clear that they were a frequent associate of your ancestor. Even if they are not related, they may come from the same town.

The following examples might be a little US-centered but can be applied at least partially also for other countries of immigration. Make sure you get access to as many as possible:

Passenger list

• might state origin already
• people with the same surname listed in adjacent lines on a passenger manifest
• what about people with same origin/profession? some might be easier to track down
• 1900 US census asked for year of immigration, which might help in finding the right passenger list entry
• also consult NARA indexes
• Le Havre
  • how to find sailors, passengers and boats
  • search for passengers
• Marian L. Smith: [ https://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/manifests/ A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations]
• Stephen P. Morse: One-Step Webpages to search passengers and ships on several databases

Naturalization

• details on the process: FamilySearch Wiki
• check for all documents requirements in the process (e.g. Declaration of Intention, Petition and Certificate)
• as always: not everything is online, but a lot can be found at FamilySearch and ancestry

Census records

• are there "similar" neighbors from the same area easier to track down?
• check adults with the same surname listed in the same or adjacent households in the census
• check adults with a different surname appearing in the same or adjacent household over multiple censuses
• 1900 census contains year of immigration - might help finding passenger list

Marriage record

• might state something about origin
• spouse known before coming over?
• might contain related/friendly/close witnesses which might be easier to track down in terms of origin

Make sure you compare your ancestor's arrival data with the wedding date, in case he got married in the country of immigration. If there's only very little time between them, he might have known his/her spouse already when emigrating, either in person or maybe via some relatives. Make sure you check the village of origin of the spouse and the area around it.

Military record

Did this person serve in the military in their new land? Military pension files include supporting documentation which may include birthdate, birthplace, name of spouse, marriage date & location, death date and location, and other personal information.

Veterans of the U.S. Civil War were eligible for pension benefits at both the State and Federal levels. Applications for the pension were thorough and government pension offices required supporting documentation to evaluate a claim. This could include documents such as copies of birth records, marriage certificates, death certificates, family Bible records, supporting affidavits from friends, family, military colleagues, clergy, or physicians. Some pension files are over 100 pages long. The files are considered government records and part of the U.S. National Archives.

If the person (or their widow) applied for pension benefits, there should be an index stub. The index cards are searchable at FamilySearch and searchable/viewable at Fold3. The application number is the key.

You can take that information to the website of the National Archives and request (and pay $30 to $80, depending) for a reproduction of their Compiled Military Service File (NATF 86) or Federal Military Pension Application (NATF 85B or 85D, depending).

It can be a slow process to wait for the National Archives to send you the file (either paper or electronic) -- something like 1-4 months -- and it does cost some money. But it could be the key to the information you need to push your research further back. And that could be worth the price.

Death record

• might state origin
• person filling it in is similar to witnesses at wedding (see above)

Church records

• often contain additional / different information than the civil birth, marriage and death records
• was the person maybe witness/sponsor/godparent of somebody else, who can be tracked down easier?
• also check records besides birth/marriage/death records like communions, confirmations, catechisms, memberships etc.

Obituary

• http://www.newspapers.com (logged-in users see better search results, even with a free account)
• http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
• state newspaper archives (e.g. for California)
• local libraries and historic societies
• also check people interred in the same grave, especially those who died shortly after arrival

Town/county history

For a lot of towns and counties there were books published about their history, that might contain a bit about the person you're looking for.

• Wikipedia article of town/county often lists them
• Google Books (always worth a try also with the plain name and maybe place names)
• Internet Archive (has a lot of the content from Google Books available, that is blocked there for users from Europe due to copyright)
• local libraries and historic societies

Children

• mostly all of the above plus baptism/birth exist for them as well, sometimes have more information about parents than in their own records
• also check godparents, as they might be related or at least from the area of origin

Compilations

• German Immigrants in American Church Records (GIACR) collects American church records that state a place of origin. There are volumes about multiple state available, as well as an index for sale. Some WikiTreers have access to some of the volumes and might help with lookup.
• Bibliography of German Emigration Record Sources
• The Immigrant Genealogical Society in Burbank, California, doesn't only have some GIACR volumes, but also has other genealogical compilations organized by surname. Feel free to request look-ups, but please be advised that due to a shortage of volunteers, there may well be a time lag between the date of request and the date of response (especially in summer). Some charges may apply if substantial time is involved or if significant copying is needed.

Notes on Names

Remember that records in the country of immigration were often recorded phonetically by someone who wasn't German speaking. Vowels and certain consonants (P/B, K/G, T/D, F/V, SCH/SH) can be highly variable. In addition, the way your recent relatives pronounce a family surname isn't necessarily the way the immigrant ancestor pronounced it. For example, "Eise" might be pronounced like "icy" by Americans today, but records made in the 10 years after immigration record the name as "Isa." If you can't find a record in the country of immigration, you may need to get creative with your searches.

Note also that the concept of middle names doesn't apply to Germany. A baptism record might contain multiple names, but only one or some of them were usually used in daily life. That "Rufname", or an anglicized version of it, may be the only name recorded on records in the country of immigration. For example, someone baptized as Johann Friedrich may be John, Fred, or Frederick in US records; Katharina Karolina might be Catherine or Caroline. Conversely, the Fred you find in US records might be Johann Friedrich, Georg Friedrich, Friedrich Jacob, etc. in German records.

Here is a useful academic article on Types of German Surname Changes in America. It can help give you ideas on alternate spellings to search for.

A great way to figure out how a name was spelled in Germany is to find a document your immigrant ancestor signed: a marriage license application, a naturalization record, a property deed of sale, or probate records can give you the spelling you need for German records.

A way to check whether you have a reasonable German spelling for a surname are Geogen and NVK, which will show you where a surname is common in modern day Germany.

If you have found the place, make sure you also check for other surnames, as your ancestor might have been born without the parents being married (carrying the mother's surname) or even adopted.

Finding the place of origin

In case you were still not able to determine the exact origin of your German immigrant ancestor with research in the country of immigration, there still might be a chance, in case the name is rare and/or specific to a certain area. You can use these tools, to get an idea of the distribution of the name:

• Geogen: see name distribution based on the 2002 phone book
• Namensverbreitungskarte: similar service by Compgen based on World War I casualty lists and/or 1996 phone book with a more detailed map underneath

If you were able to narrow it down to at least a historic state of Germany there might be also state-specific sources available to help you. Apart from the hints below, Compgen's GenWiki also has Kategorie:Auswanderung Deutschland, which might contain helpful hints or links for certain areas.

Be aware that there were some German territories that were named after their capital, which nowadays is a known big city. If a person is stated to come from there, it might only mean that he/she was a citizen of that territory, not necessarily living in that particular city, but any of the places within that state. Examples are the Kingdom of Hanover, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, the Duchy of Holstein as well as the Electorate of Hesse (aka Hesse-Kassel) and the Grand Duchy of Hesse (aka Hesse-Darmstadt).

If your ancestor's origin is stated as Prussia/Preußen, you might also want to check out the article So you think your ancestor was Prussian… by ManyRoads.

Baden-Württemberg

State Archives of Baden-Württemberg provide the database auswanderer-bw.de, which lists Baden-Württemberg emigrants and allows to filter by destination, origin and others (if that data is available). It might be also useful to search the States Archives' website itself, as it enables you to order files about the emigration process for some of the people from the database.

Friedrich R. Wollmershäuser analyzed Baden newspaper announcements and published them under the four volume collection Emigrants from the Grandduchy of Baden before 1872 / Auswanderungen aus dem Großherzogtum Baden vor 1872. Introduction is in German and English, the lists are only in English. The volumes are sorted by last name and contain the names of people that were announced wanting to emigrate, having deserted, being absent/missing etc.

• Volume 1. The Breisgau region with the districts of Breisach, Emmendingen, Ettenheim, Freiburg, Hornberg (until 1857), Kenzingen, Staufen, St. Blasien (until 1844), Triberg (until 1858), and Waldkirch, ISBN 978-3-95505-040-5
• Volume 2. The Odenwald and Bauland regions with the districts of Adelsheim, Boxberg, Buchen Eberbach, Gerlachsheim, Krautheim, Mosbach, Tauberbischofsheim, Walldürn and Wertheim, ISBN 978-3-95505-041-2
• Volume 3. The Ortenau region with the districts of Achern (until 1864), Gengenbach, Haslach, Lahr, Oberkirch, Offenburg, Rheinbischofsheim and Wolfach, ISBN 978-3-95505-042-9
• Volume 4. The area around Rastatt with the districts of Achern (from 1865), Baden-Baden, Bühl, Ettlingen, Gernsbach and Rastatt, ISBN 978-3-95505-043-6

He also did a corresponding two volume edition of Emigrants from the Kingdom of Württemberg before 1850 / Auswanderungen aus dem Königreich Württemberg vor 1850, which are split by time frame instead of region:

• Volume 1: Auswanderer und Abwesende aus dem Königreich Württemberg und seinen Nachbarregionen, 1785-1815, ISBN 978-3-95505-051-1.
• Volume 2: Auswanderer und Abwesende aus dem Königreich Württemberg und seinen Nachbarregionen, 1816-1835, ISBN 978-3-95505-052-8

The Wollmershäuser books roughly cover the 19th century. For the 18th century, Werner Hacker published several books that each focus on immigration from one region.

In the digital collection of the Baden State Library sometimes one can also find newspaper announcements about people that either want to emigrate or about emigrated people being searched for because of heritage affairs. It is currently doesn't seem that the Württemberg State Library has a similar offer.

For Württemberg, on the other hand, there is the Württemberg Emigration Index by Trudy Schenk, which contains data of about 60,000 people. It is accessible with a free ancestry account. What is shown as "Number" when viewing a search result there, actually is a microfilm number, one can search in the FamilySearch catalog.

Bayern / Bavaria

As emigration from Bavaria to America, Canada, South America and other overseas territories always took place by ship from German and/or Dutch and French ports. Be aware that the Palatinate/Pfalz, back then also belonged to Bavaria, so you might also find people from present-day #Rheinland-Pfalz / Rhineland-Palatinate.

Books about emigration from Bavaria:

• Alfons Pfrenzinger: Die mainfränkische Auswanderung nach Ungarn und den österreichischen Erbländern im 18. Jahrhundert (1941/1984) - contains a list of around 7.000 names concerning emigration to Hungary from the Mainfranken area in the 18th century
• Manfred Rimpler, Marita Haller, Reinhard Haller: Auswanderer aus Bayern und Böhmen - Band II (Ohetaler-Verlag 2023) - various reports, essays, stories about emigrants from the Bavarian Forest and Bohemia to North America and other overseas regions

There is also database based on announcements in Amts-/Intelligenzblätter between ca. 1805 and 1865. It contains missing people (potential illegal emigration) from 1807 until 1852 as well as emigrations from 1832 until 1863.

Hessen/Hesse

The consolidated emigrant database of the National Archives in Darmstadt, Marburg and Wiesbaden is far from complete (Hessian WikiTreer Daniel Bamberger stated that he finds people there in about one of ten cases), but is still a good starting point. Be aware that this database contains a lot of announcements about people wanting to leave Hesse, without the confirmation that they did (e.g. Johann Jacob Seipp (1753-1830)).

The database of Hessian troups in America seems to be a lot more complete, which might also be due to the limitation to military records.

During the 19th century, the area that is now Hesse was mostly covered by two large states, plus about half a dozen smaller states. These were known as Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel (and named after their capital cities of Darmstadt and Kassel, respectively).

To identify the parish offices that were responsible for a place at any given time, the Historical Gazetteer can be used. Note that a place's parochial affiliation could change over time. For example, the entry for Allendorf (Eder) tells you in the section "church and religion" that Allendorf (Eder) belonged to the parish of Battenfeld (which is where the parish records were kept), until Allendorf (Eder) became its own parish in 1964. Once the correct parish office is identified, it is worth checking if the records are available on Archion, and to check on GenWiki whether there are additional genealogical resources available.

To find the civil offices, which collected data since 1875, you can search the Hessische Geburten-, Ehe-, Sterberegister. Digitizations of most records are available from there, but identifying the correct office is not trivial. For example, data for Allendorf (Eder) is found in the civil records of Rennertehausen. There is no simple way to find the correct office, other than searching through all the places near the person's place of origin. The map at the Historical Gazetteer (link above), accessible by clicking on the Hesse map in a place's entry, can be of great help, like here.

As with many regions in Germany, finding a specific place in Hesse can be challenging, even when the name of the place is known. For example, when looking for Allendorf in Hesse, this could mean any of several dozen places. If it is disambiguated by stating the nearest river, as was custom in Germany, that may still not fully solve the problem; for instance, there are about half a dozen towns and villages called Allendorf lying on or near to the river Lahn, all within a 30-mile radius of each other. All of this can make it difficult to identify a person's origin. If you find yourself unable to identify the correct location, it may be necessary to employ the help of locals. The Ahnenforschung.Net Forum is a good place to do so.

For the Principality of Waldeck there is "Die waldeckische Auswanderung zwischen 1829 und 1872" by Karl Thomas, which contains an alphabetical list of emigrants in the first volume and chronological lists in the second one. Those books contain the names of people, who were announced in the newspaper "Fürstlich Waldeckisches Regierungs-Blatt", in order for their creditors to be able to claim potential debts before they leave.

See also: Space:Hesse_Team#Research_Help_and_Regional_Resources

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern / Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania

The German Institute for Migration and Ancestral Research (IMAR) in Rostock used to operate a database of about 5,000 individual emigrants from Mecklenburg-Schwerin and 8,000 individual emigrants from Mecklenburg-Strelitz for the period from 1835-1862. It was based on documents in the Mecklenburg Main State Archive at Schwerin.

The Immigrant Genealogical Society owns a copy of the database and provides an online index to it.

Niedersachsen / Lower Saxony

The Oldenburg Society for Family History (Oldenburgische Gesellschaft für Familienkunde e.V.) provides a database of emigrants from the whole Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.

Rheinland-Pfalz / Rhineland-Palatinate

side note 1: not all people that emigrated during the Palatine Migration were actually from the Palatinate

The southern part of today's Rhineland-Palatinate belonged to Bavaria from 1816 until 1946. Until 1837 it was called Circle of the Rhine, then it was renamed the Palatinate (Pfalz). Therefor sources for Bavaria might also help.

Some books by Werner Hacker (see section Baden-Württemberg) also cover the area. Additionally there's a series of books named "In Amerika verstorbene Pfälzer" which contains obituaries of immigrations from Palatinate published in the German langauge US newspaper "Der Pfälzer in Amerika".

APERTUS, the virtual reading room of the State Archives Administration (Landesarchivverwaltung) contains a search that will query the databases of multiple Rhineland Palatinate archive databases.

The Institute for Palatine History and Folklore ("Institut für pfälzische Geschichte und Volkskunde") owns a card index of 300 000 items and is working on making them available online (project description). In summer 2023 they started beta-test of their database with letters A to S online.

Additional sources:

• Collection of digital and print-only lists about emigrants
• List of emigration related books for Pfalz/Palatinate at GenWiki
• Israel Daniel Rupp: A Collection of Upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French and Other Immigrants in Pennsylvania From 1727 to 1776

Saarland

• Werner Hacker: Auswanderungen aus Rheinpfalz und Saarland im 18. Jahrhundert, 1987, (see paragraph on Baden-Württemberg on how to search in Hacker books)

• Josef Mergen: Die Auswanderungen aus den ehemals preussischen Teilen des Saarlandes im 19. Jahrhundert, 2 Vol., 1973/1987

• P. Brommer, K. H. Debus, H.-W. Hermann: Inventar der Quellen zur Geschichte der Auswanderung 1500-1914 in den staatlichen Archiven von Rheinland-Pfalz und dem Saarland, Band 27 der Veröffentlichungen der Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Koblenz. (partially searchable via GoogleBooks)

More books can be found at the list of emigration books to Eastern Europa for Rhineland Palatinate.

Sachsen/Saxony

be aware that parts of Saxony meanwhile belong to the states Thüringen/Thuringia and Sachsen-Anhalt/Saxony-Anhalt

As of 2022 there are no general emigration databases or books known, so one has to query one of the local state and/or city archive (Staatsarchiv, Stadtarchiv).

Schleswig-Holstein

Professional genealogist Klaus Struve offers a list of over 110 000 people who (potentially) emigrated from the territories of Schleswig and Holstein.

Research in the place of origin

Church books are the most frequently used source for genealogical research in Germany. If the records in the country of immigration do not reveal if he/she was Catholic or Protestant/Lutheran/Reformed, the 1890s map of Christian denominiations in the German Empire might help to get an idea. Of course your ancestor might still have been part of a different regional religious minority, but it might be a starting point, to look at the predominant one first.

In case there are no church books available at the usual suspects, Compgen's GenWiki might be of help. Search for the place name to learn if there is/are

• a place where one can find church and civil records as well as other sources (section Genealogische Quellen)
• one or more published family books (section Genealogische Bibliografie). Also check out Familienbücher: German Family Books to see if one of your fellow WikiTreers maybe the family book you're looking for.
• a genealogical or historical society for the area (section Genealogische und historische Gesellschaften). If there is nothing stated, try a higher level like district/state. Could also use Google with <place name> and search terms like Geschichtsverein, Lokalgeschichte or Regionalgeschichte.
• people that are researching the place (section Forscherkontakte). It might also be an idea to check at Compgen's database platform GEDBAS for entries with the right surnames/places and to contact the uploaders of the data. Same of course goes for trees on commercial websites, FamilySearch and geni.com .

If you find anything that is not stated in the GenWiki article about the place, please try to add it.

Also check out regional resources compiled by the Germany Project.

Use WikiTree

Precisely document all your attempts, successes or failures as well as your assumptions, theories and questions in the WikiTree profile of your immigrant ancestor. If you would like to have support with a concrete questions, post it at G2G including a link to the profile. Also make sure you mark your questions with tags for others to easier find it (e.g. Germany or German_Roots).

Since WikiTree is also indexed by search engines like Google you increase the chance of others finding the profile about your ancestor, who might be looking for the same person and might have exactly the answer you need.