Germany

Well yesterday I went to a conference about ways to trace your genealogy in Germany. My paternal grandmother Elsie was born to two immigrants of German descent from Pomerania. Considering WWII sits in between their departure and my current efforts, and the land now belongs to Poland, I had some serious concerns about my ability to accomplish anything on the other side of the Atlantic. But I learned at the conference that the family history center (our friends in Salt Lake City) do have alot of records on microfilm. I hadn't gotten the impression, on my earlier brief investigation, that they did. The nice thing is that they have branch centers all over and I can simply order most microfilm to view right here.

What we learned yesterday was that there are some basic tools to help identify the correct microfilm/s to order. I have jumped one hurdle I believe, in that I have basically located place of origin for both my Great Grandpa Frederick (Fritz) Matthies, and my Great Grandma Bertha Beise.

I lucked out really. Bertha travelled with her parents Carl and Johanna? (this is interesting in that cencus records list her as Minnie), a brother August, and two sisters, Anna and Martha. They travelled out of Hamburg, on the Dania (click on the D at the top and scroll down to Dania), May 10, 1890, and arrived in New York harbor May 22, 1890. Hamburg kept good records and I have record of both ends of the journey documenting the town they came from. Bertha was 13.

Her future husband Frederick Matthies arrived in Baltimore on the SS Oldenburg on Apr 14, 1892. I am still investigating whom he travelled with. He was 24, but there was a Matthies family that travelled on that ship, and there was some kind of relationship. The Oldenburg sailed out of Bremen. They didn't keep their departure records, and thankfully the arrival records included town of origin. Finding his record was a trick. Love Ancestry, but his record wasn't coming up on my searches of his index. It was suggested that town of origin was on his naturalization records, so I went to Minnesota Historical Society and got a copy of those records. There I found the month and year of arrival and port of arrival, and was able to scan the ship records visually to find him.

I have several documents from Swift County MN, where they settled temporarily, including Fritz and Berthas marriage certificate, and Fritz's naturalization records, but don't have them scanned at this point in time. I am attaching the departure/arrival records

Bertha departure Bertha arrival Fritz departure

From there they introduced us to some tools to determine what town originally held the records that are needed for the search, because that is how the FHC would have them indexed. The interesting thing is most the records would be kept by Churches of course, and you really should know whether they were Protestant or Catholic (or Jewish if that is the case) cuz the Churches or Synagogue might not be in the same town. This might sound dumb but I don't honestly know the answer to this for Fritz and Bertha but am expecting Protestant. Soooo next step is to check into this and order the microfilm!