German Society of Maryland

 From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

 

The German Society of Maryland was founded in 1783 and is still in existence over 242 years later. Their stated purpose on the website is to “preserve and promote the German heritage, language, and traditions through educational, social and benevolent programs; and to develop the unity and continuity of the German American community in the State of Maryland.” Their website can be accessed at https://germansociety-md.com.

 

Their website provides historical information noting that the Society was founded in 1783 but received its corporate charter from the Maryland Legislature in 1818. Two articles have been written about the Society’s history and can be accessed online

 

·      Wust, Klaus G. Pioneers in Service: The History of the German Society of Maryland, 1783–1981. This article can be accessed at https://germansociety-md.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pioneers.pdf

·      Mruck, Armin. Two Hundred Years: The German Society of Maryland. This article can be accessed at https://germansociety-md.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Armin.pdf

The Maryland State Archives (MSA) in Annapolis has in their Special Collections the “German Society of Maryland Collection” on microfilm. It has been digitized, so that it can be accessed onsite at the MSA; however, it is not available to access from home. The collection dates from 1854. 

 

The collection contains two series:

 

·      Series 1: Passenger Lists, Transcripts. This series contains 101 items.

·      Series 2: Documents. This series contains 37 items.

These records offered many surprise findings, such as a travel diary containing genealogical family information for several generations, and are well worth exploring!

 

Teresa Steinkamp McMillin wrote a complementary post on Midwest German aid societies. See her blog at https://lindstreet.blog.

Tomorrow is the big day -- German Phase 1 begins!

Teresa and I are so excited to be offering our German Phase 1 course as part of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy's (SLIG) fall lineup.

We will be spending the next five weeks supporting our students on their quest to find their German immigrant's hometown.

Finding Church Records in US

From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

In the last few posts, we’ve talked about the importance of church records in the US for finding a German town of origin. In today’s post, I’ll give you some tips on how to find those church records.

 

Identify their Affiliation

The first step is to identify, if possible, their religious affiliation. You might already know that based on oral tradition. A clue might come from a civil marriage record, if available. If they were married by a minister, determine with what church he was affiliated. County histories are a great way to find that information. Histories of churches in the area where they lived are another resource to consider. Clues about their affiliation might also be gleaned from an obituary or from the cemetery in which they are buried.

 

Identify Possible Churches

The next step is the church. If a large city, use city directories. If a rural area, use county or regional histories. Each of these publications typically has a section for churches. Identify the churches that were in operation during the time in question. 

 

When a family lived in a more remote area, their children might have been baptized at a church unrelated to their affiliation. When in a city where many churches were available, they likely attended a church not only aligned with their affiliation, but with their country of origin. For example, if they were Germans and Lutheran, they would have attended a German Lutheran church, not a Swedish Lutheran church. Use clues from census records and city directories to determine which churches might have been closest to them.

 

Find the Records

At this point, you might have a few churches that are possible or you might have only one. Now you need to find the records for those churches. Determine if the church is still open. If so, start by contacting them.

 

If not, I always start with FamilySearch. Look in their catalog by place name (the county and/or town where the church was located). If you don’t find them, there are many more options.

 

Check other major websites such as Findmypast or Ancestry. They have a few significant holdings, though church records are not necessarily their strength. 

 

Many church records are not online. That doesn’t mean they’re not accessible. Check the archives of that denomination. You might have to do a little digging to find this information. Check the FamilySearch Wiki for the denomination in question. Many religious denominations have split, merged, and otherwise changed over time. See “Family Trees for American Religions” for more information.

 

Check the holdings of local libraries, historical and genealogical societies. Check local and state 

archives. Consult genealogical research guides for the area. Check Worldcat for published records.

 

With a little perseverance, you have a good chance of finding the records you need. The rewards can be great!

Deciphering Misspelled Place Names

From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

 

Last week, we talked about Debra’s ancestor, Wilhelm Heinrich Weber, who was born in Wahlen, Alfeld, Hessen in historic Germany. She found the name of his birthplace in his church funeral record. That record gave his birthplace as “Whalen, Kreis Alsfeld, Hess. Darmstadt.”

 

To find information about places in historic Germany, a popular tool among US researchers is Meyers Gazetteer(https://www.meyersgaz.org/). We just call it Meyers. Originally in book form, this has been transcribed into a database with many added features, including wildcard searches. 

 

If you search for “Whalen” in Meyers, you will receive no results. That is because the town in the church record was misspelled. I will demonstrate a few solutions.

 

The second portion of the place name in the church record is “Kreis Alsfeld.” Kreis (abbreviated in Meyers as “Kr”) is a word that translates to district. It is kind of like us saying “county.” The scribe was telling us that Whalen was in the district called Alsfeld. So let’s see if Alsfeld is in Meyers. It is!

 

 

In that entry, we see that Alsfeld is a Kreis Stadt, which means it’s a larger city and the seat of the district Alsfeld. It’s kind of like Chicago is the seat for Cook County. In the light gray bar across the top of this entry, you’ll see the word “Related.” This will show me places related to Alsfeld. Click on that.

 

 

There are three categories. We want to know which towns are in the Kreis Alsfeld. I click on the arrow next to “Kr.” The window expands to show a list of town names. Read through the list to see if any name looks similar to Whalen. Almost at the bottom, there’s an entry “Wahlen 1) Kr. Alsfeld.” That is the closest match and it is the town we want!

 

Another approach to this problem would be to do a wildcard search, removing the vowels and the often-silent letter ‘h.’ Using this approach, I type “w*l*n” and press enter. Each * substitutes any number of letters. Doing this gives a LOT of results. But we know it’s in Hess. Darmstadt. See the “Filter results by region” at the top? From that list select “Hessen.” Once done, “Wahlen 1) Kr. Alsfeld” is the first result. 

 

 

I’m glossing over a whole lot of history about Hesse Darmstadt and Hesse. It’s too much to get into right now, but if you want to read more about it, see my blogpost from May 2020. https://lindstreet.blog/2020/05/21/german-states-and-provinces-as-of-1912-and-their-current-locations/.

 

Next week we’ll talk about finding those church records in the US. 

 

 

 

The Value of US Church Records

 From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

The German town of origin is necessary for conducting research in Germany because Germany was not a unified country until 1871. For later immigrants to the United States, this information may be easier to find on passenger lists than for earlier immigrants. For those early immigrants, United States church records can be a great source for that information. The challenge with using those records is knowing the religion of the immigrant, the church they attended, and where those records can be found and accessed. But when you do find them, they can be a gold mine.

 

My 4^th great-grandfather, William H. Weaver, or Wilhelm Heinrich Weber in German, immigrated to America at the age of eight in 1834. He died in Baltimore City in 1897. He was a founding member of St. Stephens Evangelical Lutheran church, which merged with Saint James in 1962.[1] The church is located on Hanover and Hamburg Streets in Baltimore City. Its records have been microfilmed and are available on the Maryland State Archives website (https://msa.maryland.gov : accessed 2025) under Special Collections > Religious Records.

 

Death records may provide the German town of origin for an immigrant as shown below:[2]

 

While the name is misspelled as “Whalen” it provides the Kreis (Alsfeld) and Länder (Hessen Darmstadt), which enables a researcher to locate the right town … Wahlen.

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[1] “Sts. Stephen & James Lutheran Baltimore,” German Marylanders (https://wwwgermanmarylanders.org : accessed 2025).

[2] St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church Collection (Baltimore City, Maryland), Book 1, pp. 444–5, deaths, 1897, no. 20, Wilhelm Heinrich Weber, 31 May 1897; digital images, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov : accessed 2025), Special Collection 4216-1, microfilm SCM 1477; Maryland State Archives, Annapolis.

Finding German Emigration Records

 From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

 

In my last blog post, I showed my great great grandmother’s emigration record [Auswanderungsakte] from Baden in 1854. In this post, I am going to show you how I found her record on the Baden-Württemberg State Archive website [Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg]. The images of these records are not online, they must be ordered from the archive. But this particular state archive makes that process easy.

 

From the main page, you see a big white and yellow box with the word “Suche.” This means “search” and you can search for many things from this screen. In the top right corner, you will see a little link “EN,” which means “English.” You might be tempted to click that so you can see this website in English. But if you do that, this search box will disappear and the options available to you will, too. Stick with the German version and use tools, such as Google Translate, if you are not familiar with German.

 

In the “Suche” box, I entered my great great grandmother’s last name “Ohnemus” and I added the word “Auswanderung” which means emigration. I used no quotes. If you have a common surname, you can add the person’s first name or their town name, if known. Keep in mind to use the German variants of their names (e.g., Johann, not John). Press Enter.

 

In the middle of the resulting page, I see a heading “Staatsarchiv Freiburg” and below that “alle 21 Suchergebnisse im Online-Findmittelsystem anzeigen.” This means there were 21 results found at the Freiburg branch of the State Archive. To see those results, click on the diagonal arrow after the word “anzeigen.”

 

The next page shows the details of the results. Each result has its own box with information about it. I scrolled through the 21 results until I found one about Katharina Ohnemus who emigrated from Schweighausen in 1854. Each result has the emigrant’s name, the village they are leaving, their destination, and year. From here, I clicked on the “Findbuch” link, just to see some more details.     

 

From this page, you see a lot of the same information. The blue arrow points to the number of pages in this item. Five pages. The orange arrow is the Permalink that you can click on and copy. This allows you to save this item in your own documents so you can return to it more quickly. The red circle is the link to add this to your shopping cart. Click on that, and I’ll show you how to order this.

 

From this screen (don’t get scared with the German, use your translation tools), you will see that you have two options. You can order this item for viewing in their reading room OR you can have a copy made and sent to you. Keep clicking through. On the next screen, it will ask you to log in. If you do not have an account, you can create one. Once you are logged in, it will ask you if you want the full item (yes!) and if you want a digital or paper copy. Continue clicking through until all questions are answered and your item has been requested. The last time I purchased an emigration record was last year. It cost me 13€ and I used PayPal to send the money.  

 

Not all German state archives make this process so simple. Some archives have emigration indexes. Some have a similar shopping cart feature that allows one to order archival records. If you have questions, always feel free to contact an archivist. Do not expect them to do the research for you. Rather they can guide you to items in their holdings that might be helpful to your research. 

 

Emigration Records from Germany

 From German Girls Genealogy (Teresa Steinkamp McMillin & Debra A. Hoffman):

[Written by Teresa]

When a person was leaving historical areas that became Germany, they were often legally obligated to get permission. This differed by time and place. Usually, nineteenth century migrants were under some obligation to register. The requirements generally ensured people paid their debts and men had fulfilled their military obligations. Not everyone abided by these laws. Good statistics are hard to find, but in my own experience, way less than half of emigrants went through this process. But when they did, records were created! I am going to show you an example today.

 

My great great grandmother, Katharina Ohnemus, received permission to emigrate in June 1854. She was leaving Schweighausen, Freiburg, Baden [today’s Schweighausen-Schuttertal in Baden-Württemberg]. Her emigration document [Auswanderungsakte] contains five pages and is full of good details.[1] She was nineteen years old, unmarried, and she planned to travel with her sister. Her parents were Protas Ohnemus and Franziska Offenburger.

 

She indicated that she had enough money for the trip. She intended to travel via France to New Orleans. Katharina and her parents’ signatures are all included.

 

I have never found her immigration record at New Orleans. Shortly after she arrived, she married Landolin Meyer who was also from Schweighausen.[2] I have not found his emigration record. 

 

Next week, I will show you how I found and ordered this record. 

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[1] Bezirksamt [district] Ettenheim, Baden, Auswanderungsakten [emigration records], Schweighausen, 1854, Katharina Ohnemus; Staatsarchiv [State Archive] Freiburg, Germany, B 701/1 Nr. 717. 

[2] St. Boniface Catholic Church (Quincy, Illinois), Marriages, Vol. 1, 1839–1857, p. 72, no. 14, Meyer-Ohnemus; church rectory. The church has since closed and these records are now on Ancestry.