Family Roots Publishing has for the first time bundled our five most popular Germanic research guides – and is offering them as a bundle to the public at 40% off (that’s full wholesale – what the dealer’s pay).
These books are perfect for the beginner in German research, as well as anyone wishing to have a variety of German resources at their fingertips.
The bundle is made up of the following items:
- Tracing Your Germanic Ancestors, by Leland K Meitzler
- German Census Records 1816-1916, by Roger Minert, Ph.D., A.G.
- German Research Companion, Third Edition, by Shirley J. Riemer; Roger Minert, Ph.D., A.G.; and Jeniffer A. Anderson
- Deciphering Gothic Records – Useful Hints Of Helping You Read “Old German” Script!, by Fay S. Deardon
- Understanding Meyers Orts – Translating Guide For The Directory Of The Towns And Places Of The German Empire, by Fay S. Deardon
Value of the five books making up this bundle is $87.85. We are discounting the bundle by 40%, making it just $52.71 (plus $8 USA p&h). Click here or on the illustration to order. This sale ends July 20, 2017.
Don’t need all five of these books? We still have a deal for you. We are discounting each of the items by 25% purchased as less-than-the-bundle. Click on their links to go to their individual pages. Use your back arrow to return to this page and purchase the bundle.
Following are full descriptions of each of the five items:
Tracing Your Germanic Ancestors; by Leland K. Meitzler from the Publishers of Your Genealogy Today, Internet Genealogy & History Magazine; 2016; 8.5×11; saddle-stapled; 66 pp; Item #: FR0121
This book is also available in PDF format.
It’s a pleasure to announce this newest edition to the Tracing Your Ancestors series. German ancestral research represents one of the largest areas of interest in the USA
- Find Your Germanic Place of Origin!
- Passenger and Immigration Records
- German Parish & Civil Registers
- German Maps and Gazetteers
- Census Records of Germany
- Online German Research
- Surname Distribution Maps
Contents
- Finding The Place Of Origin; Locate your Germanic ancestors’ home villages
- Genealogical “Hail Mary!” Search; Using German surname distribution maps
- German Maps & Gazetteers; Don’t overlook these important resources
- Passenger & Immigration Records; Trace your ancestors’ travels to their new homeland
- Online German Research; We show you the key online resources for researching your Germanic ancestors
- German Parish & Civil Records; Where to locate the vital records for the birth, marriage, and death of your ancestors
- German Census Records; We look at where to locate German census records and the best way to access them
German Census Records, 1816-1916: The When, Where, and How of a Valuable Genealogical Resource; by Roger P Minert, Ph.D., A.G.; 2016; 260 pp; 8.5×11; Softbound; Written in English; ISBN: 9781628590777; Item #: FR0650
After wondering for several years why American researchers know very little about German census records, my good friend, Dr. Roger Minert, found an opportunity to live in Europe for six months to investigate them. He was sure that many existed, but he could find very little information about them. While in Europe, he learned that even German researchers know very little about their census records! How could such a potentially important resource be lost to obscurity? In a new book, written in English, researchers can now learn where and when German census records were compiled, as well as why and how. The author also describes state by state the content of census records and explains how surviving census documents can be located. This is groundbreaking information, of enormous value to anyone researching their German roots.
Would you like additional information about your family in old country? The information found in the parish registers is key to your research, but there’s often even more family information to find in the German census records.
The following Table of Contents is found in the volume:
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: A History of Census Records in the German States
- Chapter 2: The Census of 1867: The Great Transition
- Chapter 3: Census Records during the German Empire 1871-1918
- Chapter 4: Census Records in the German States from 1816 to 1864
- Chapter 5: Anhalt
- Chapter 6: Baden
- Chapter 7: Bayern [Bavaria]
- Chapter 8: Brandenburg
- Chapter 9: Braunschweig [Brunswick]
- Chapter 10: Bremen (Hansestadt Bremen)
- Chapter 11: Elsaß-Lothringen {Alsace-Lorraine]
- Chapter 12: Hamburg (Hansestadt Hamburg)
- Chapter 13: Hannover [Hanover]
- Chapter 14: Hessen [Hesse]
- Chapter 15: Hessen-Nassau [Hesse-Nassau]
- Chapter 16: Hohenzollern
- Chapter 17: Lippe
- Chapter 18: Lübeck (Hansestadt Lübeck) [Luebeck]
- Chapter 19: Mecklenburg-Schwerin
- Chapter 20: Mecklenburg-Strelitz
- Chapter 21: Oldenburg
- Chapter 22: Ostpreußen [East Prussia]
- Chapter 23: Pommern [Pomerania]
- Chapter 24: Posen
- Chapter 25: Reuß älterer Linie [Reuss Elder Line]
- Chapter 26: Reuß jüngere Linie [Reuss Younger Line]
- Chapter 27: Rheinprovinz [Rhineland Province]
- Chapter 28: Sachsen-Altenburg [Saxe-Altenburg]
- Chapter 29: Sachsen-Meiningen [Saxe-Meiningen]
- Chapter 30: Königreich Sachsen [Kingdom of Saxony]
- Chapter 31: Sachsen-Meiningen [Saxe-Meiningen]
- Chapter 32: Provinz Sachsen [Province of Saxony]
- Chapter 33: Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach [Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach]
- Chapter 34: Schaumburg-Lippe
- Chapter 35: Schlesian [Silesia]
- Chapter 36: Schleswig-Holstein
- Chapter 37: Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
- Chapter 38: Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
- Chapter 39: Waldeck
- Chapter 40: Westfalen [Westphalia]
- Chapter 41: Westpreußen [West Prussia]
- Chapter 42: Württemberg [Wuerttemberg]
- Chapter 43: German Census Records from 1816-1916: What Do We Know Now?
- Chapter 44: Conclusions
- Appendix A: Writing to Archives in Germany, France, and Poland
- Appendix B: Conducting Census Research in Archives in Germany, France and Poland
- Appendix C: Interesting Documents Relating to German Census Campaigns
- Appendix D: The States of Germany in 1871
- Bibliography
- Index
The German Research Companion, Third Edition, by Shirley J. Riemer, Roger P. Minert & Jennifer A. Anderson. 2010; 706 pp; softbound; ISBN 0-9656761-6-1; Item #M0025.
Roger Minert, Shirley J. Riemer, and Jennifer Anderson spent hundreds of hours in adding additional material to their earlier Second Edition, editing, and layout of this book, making a good volume even better.
The German Research Companion is often referred to as “the Bible of German family history.” It provides a wide range of helpful information on virtually hundreds of topics related to German research, most indexed for easy reference. It is published in a handy 5.5 x 8.5 inch format, making it an ideal book to accompany the German family historian on research trips to libraries, archives, seminars, and even the “old country.”
Although not intended as a “how to do German research” volume, genealogists will find it one of the most complete books on German research produced. Concentrating on German research sources, it is in fact the only book in print that deals with the wide range of material needed by those who are searching their German lines. Written in English, the genealogist needs no knowledge of the German language to use the volume. Any German words and phrases found in The German Research Companion are either translated or clarified in English.
The German Research Companion contains useful details on hundreds of German genealogical topics. The following is directly from the Table of Contents:
Section 1: German land, past and present
- Germany’s political and jurisdictional organization
- The three empires
- Populations, capitals, and geography
- The courts and the constitution
- The rulers, the flag and the colonies
- The major turning points and markers of German history
Section 2: The Tools, Contacts, and Resources
- Resources for utilizing the Family History Library and its branches
- Uses of the Family History Library Catalog for German Research
- Credentialed researchers, societies, home-area sources
- The search for the German immigrant’s place of origin
- Communicating with Germany
- Sending euro abroad
- Village photographs and conference audiotapes
- Choosing between Du and Sie
- German organizations and institutes
- Frequently used resources
Section 3: Emigration and Immigration
- Immigration laws in the United States
- Emigration laws in Germany
- Naturalization records
- The immigration process and Ellis Island
- The Statue of Liberty
- Immigration laws
- Passport applications
- German immigrant aid societies
- Pennsylvania societies, archives, and libraries
- Basic resources for researching Germans from Russia
- Basic resources for researching the Danube Swabians
- Basic resources for researching the Wends (Sorbs)
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Pennsylvania
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Alsace-Lorraine
- Basic resources for researching Germans in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Sudetenland
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Bukovina
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Canada
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Czechoslovakia
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Galatia
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Liechtenstein
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Lithuania
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Netherlands
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Poland
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Silesia
- Basic resources for researching Germans in Switzerland
Section 4: United States Resources
- U.S. Cemeteries and burial records
- National Archives and Records Administration
- Social Security history and research
- U.S. Railroad and Retirement Board
- U.S. vital records
- The WPA
- The U.S. Census
- Land and property records
- The Homestead Act
- U.S. Libraries and publishers
- American military records
- Germans who fought in the American Civil War
- Hessian soldier research
- The Turnverein in America
- Fraternal organizations
Section 5: Language and Vocabularies
- History and characteristics of the German alphabet and language
- German dialectics and high, middle, and low German
- The old German script
- Abbreviations in German and Latin
- German genealogy vocabulary
- Occupations, trades and titles in German and Latin
- Medical terms, illnesses, and causes of death, in German
- German family relationships vocabulary
- Christenings, marriages, and deaths vocabularies
- Latin genealogy vocabulary
- Roman numerals
- Latin vocabularies for calendar dates, tombstone expressions, and old cities of Europe
- French genealogy vocabulary
- Fraktur
- Yiddish
Section 6: German Resources
- German church and civil registration records
- Church inventories
- Citizen books
- The German privacy law
- City registers
- German cemeteries
- Abbreviations keys to Meyers Orts- und Verkehrslexikon & Müllers grosses deutsches Ortsbuvh
- Reverse alphabetical place name indexes
- Maps
- German phonetics
- Indexes of German surnames
- Periodicals
- Place names
- Researchers
- Queries in German publications
- Village lineage books
- Postal code directories
- The Ahnenpass
- Telephone directories
- Dictionaries
Section 7: Archives
- German archive terminologies
- German federal and state archives
- County archives
- Ecclesiastical archives and organizations
- Central office for genealogy in Leipzig
- The Berlin Document Center
- The “Gauck” files
- Specialized archives
- Recommendations for working in a German archive
- Genealogy related organizations in Germany
- Historical societies in Germany
Section 8: Life in Our Ancestor’s Times
- Names and naming patterns
- Patronymic names
- Given names of Germanic and foreign origin
- “Name days”
- Old measurements
- Monetary units
- Records of guilds and tradesmen
- Calendars through the ages
- The perpetual calendar
- Feast days
- Holidays and observances
- History and customs of Christmas
- The church in modern Germany
- Religions: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and pietist, with resources
- German Universities and academic degrees
- Heraldry
- German nobility
- Military church-books, cemeteries, archives & records
- German expellees following World War II
- German prisoners of war in Americas
Section 9: Newspapers, Libraries, Museums and other Information
- City directories and manuscript collections
- German and German-American newspapers
- Special interest publications
- Emigration records in newspapers
- Sister City arrangements
- German museums, libraries, and publishers
- American universities in Germany
- U.S. Embassy offices in Germany
- Academic and cultural organizations
- Cooking measurements and ingredients
- Folk dress (Trachten)
- Greetings in German
- Formalities of letter-writing
- Telephone cards
The Appendix
- The appendix includes maps, tables, charts, and pictures that help to illustrate Germanic research.
In Conclusion
Simply said, if you’re an English-speaking person doing German research, you will profit by a copy of this new Third Edition of The German Research Companion.
Deciphering Gothic Records – Useful hints for helping you read “Old German” Script!; Compiled by Fay S. Deardon; 1996; 4.25×9; Spiral Bound; 13 pp; Item #FR0122
This booklet was created to give the researcher the most common alphabet variations, German words, names, Latin terms, and abbreviations used in Gothic records. The volume is printed in its entirety on card stock, with easy-to flip spiral binding at the top. It’s ideal for use when deciphering German Gothic script when working in the library or at home.
The following items are found in the booklet:
- Gothic Alphabet Variations
- Symbols Commonly Used in Gothic Records
- Words found in Birth Records
- Words Found in Marriage Records
- Words Found in Death Records
- Abbreviations (Gothic & Latin) Commonly Found in Old German Records
- Latin Terms Found in Old German Records
- Illnesses Found in Old German Death Records
- Titles & Occupations Found in Old German Records
- Common German Names
Understanding Meyers Orts – Translating Guide for the Directory of the Towns and Places of the German Empire; Compiled by Fay S. Deardon; 2013; 8.5×5; Spiral Bound; 20 pp; ISBN: 9781933194899; Item # FR0198
The book is a guide to reading Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexicon, which was published in 1912, and is a gazetteer of the Old German Empire., covering about 200,000 places. The gazetteer is extremely useful, but it’s very difficult to read, as it’s written in old Gothic German. The Meyers Orts set of three volumes, available at Ancestry.com in its entirely. The volumes are also partially translated at http://www.meyersgaz.org/. For those portions of each entry not translated, this guide will come in very handy.
This small booklet is made up of the following
- An introduction to the importance of Meyers Orts.
- Examples of the Gothic typeface used in Meyers Orts and how it differs from other Gothic alphabets.
- How to Read Meyers Orts Entries – with examples, and sample translations
- Common Abbreviations Used in the Meyers Orts Gazetteer – these make up the bulk of the booklet
