Family research files

[Schultz]

bubba,

I know. It's a shame. From what I've gathered from other people who've done similar research, church records are the way to go, and the only way you're going to get anywhere with that is to actually visit the towns and villages. Not many churches have the resources to index their records in a database!

[AckZel]

There is only one line which my mom was able to get down to 1393 and that probably is not absolutely accurate information. Most of the lines in my family ends around 1600's. That work has been fairly easy because Finnish protestant church has kept very accurate list of population from 1600's. Some books have burn or taken other damage which makes up most of the problems.

[bubba]

church records are the way to go, and the only way you're going to get anywhere with that is to actually visit the towns and villages. Not many churches have the resources to index their records in a database!

Adding to the problem there is if the churches were anywhere near an industrial city they likely no longer exist. One of my Dads cousins tried. The branch of the family was from around Hamburg and records were completely lost in the bombings.

[Schultz]

Adding to the problem there is if the churches were anywhere near an industrial city they likely no longer exist. One of my Dads cousins tried. The branch of the family was from around Hamburg and records were completely lost in the bombings.

Well, yes, of course, there's that problem.

There's also the off-chance of finding some distant cousin who may be wondering what happened to John Wendelinus Beck after he left Bavaria in the 1850s!

it's what makes this hobby so much fun

[bubba]

Hobby?? More like obsession! I have a dozen boxes of genealogy records and papers that I need to catalog.

[Big Paul]

I too have a couple of boxes... and they keep getting bigger...

[GMan]

I too have a couple of boxes... and they keep getting bigger...

I have too many boxes without knowing which one goes with which part of the family history (myth or fact). The real weird part is that now I am the oldest generation of the family.

I do have many gaps in the history, and cannot find out where the rest of it is.

I admire you Ackwell for getting back to the 1300's.

[Tiran]

I have the book my maternal grandmother wrote, tracing my grandfather's family, Dickson, back to 1662 in Glasgow (it actually goes one generation farther but has no hard dates, and 1662 is death, birth unknowen).
There is another book she wrote about her family, Bye, but I don't have a copy of that one. Mom does though.
Dad's side hasn't been done, but my paternal grandmother was a Stewart, so I get the Scots from both sides.

[Sherry]

My husband's Lebanese side is traced back to the 1300's due to church records. To think they've all been Christians (at least religiously) for centuries! And, perhaps even more awesome is that if the church hadn't burned down in the 14thC, the records would have gone back further still.

Sherry