And the answer is: German! The question? According to the 1990 census, what was the largest ancestral group in the United States? Surprising as it may seem, in a country primarily settled by the English, and whose closest foreign ties are to British Commonwealth countries, almost one-quarter of America (23.3%) claimed German ancestry when asked by the 1990 census.

Yet, despite the large number of German descendants in America (almost 60 million), information about how to do research on German families is not that common in genealogical literature. Yes, there are some books and an occasional article, but perhaps it is this relative dearth of instruction which stops so many Americans from searching for their German ancestors. Of course, German is a foreign language to the vast majority of Americans, even those with German roots. Add to that the problems of reading that foreign language in handwritten records, whose access may be difficult, and it is easy to understand why less German research is undertaken by North Americans.

The current article is a step (perhaps the first of many) in the direction of making German research easier for the typical English-language family historian. For, in truth, German research is generally easier then American, Canadian, or British research. Most of the key records are complete, detailed, follow standard formats, and are often not that hard to find and use.

The most popular, and useful source for most of our German ancestors is church registers. Often these are the only records in which we will find information about our ancestors and their families in the old country. Most of our German ancestors did not own land, nor were they mentioned in probate records and most German states did not have a regular census. Tax lists and other records are meager, incomplete, and difficult to access, if they exist at all.

Hence, the records of choice for documenting most Germans, especially before the late 19th Century, are the local records of birth, marriage, or death kept by the church. Unlike the United States, virtually every German resident belonged to a church and was recorded in its registers. Often there was only one church to ‘choose’ from, the state or established church. In some areas of German countries, there may have been two or three churches, but in any given locality, the great majority of residents belonged to just one denomination (either a Catholic or a Protestant church, such as Lutheran or Reformed churches). Smaller church denominations, such as Mennonites, Baptists, or other religions, such as Judaism, comprised only a few percent of the population, at most.

Parish Registers
German church records must be approached at the local level, which is generally called the parish. The books in which parish priests and ministers kept records of baptisms, weddings, and burials (church records of birth, marriage, and death) are typically called parish registers.

The first challenge in using German church records is in determining which parish included your ancestor. Learning this information (your ancestor’s home town) is usually accomplished by researching the first person in your family to come to North America from a German state. Records in the U.S. or Canada may name the home parish. You will want to check naturalization records, passenger arrival lists, domestic church registers, obituaries, and a host of other records, including family sources, to find this information. The second challenge is accessing the registers. The access issue is addressed below.

The third challenge is reading the records themselves. German parish registers are, not surprisingly, usually written in German. Some Catholic registers may be written in Latin. Reading a handwritten foreign language can be daunting for some researchers. It can be done, but it takes time to learn the language and the script. However, that is the subject for a future issue.

Fortunately, all parish registers are remarkably similar throughout German areas in Europe, in their content and format. Standard information for each type of record is defined below. Also worth noting is that German parish registers almost always provide more information than the British church registers with which many researchers are very familiar.

Most German parish registers begin in the first half of the Seventeenth Century (1600’s). However, some (particularly in the southwest) date to as early as the 1550’s, while some northern registers don’t begin until the early 1700’s. Of course, as the population in some areas grew, especially in the cities during the Industrial Revolution, new parishes were established with their own registers.

A few parishes have indexes, but most don’t. However, the arrangement (format) makes them relatively easy to search. They are chronological, however usually the three main events, baptisms, weddings, and burials are in separate registers, or on separate pages of the same book. Most registers arrange the information in columns (either well-defined or roughly ordered). The subject’s name, or date of the event, is listed first, followed by other information in a standard format throughout that register. Thus, you can scan down the list of names for the person you are seeking.

Some registers, especially those in Catholic parishes, use a paragraph style with narrative text. Hence there are more verbs, conjunctions, and articles (a, an, the) in the text to sort through, as well as grammatical endings on some words. The information is the same, and most paragraphs arrange the information in a consistent manner throughout the register. Often the surnames are underlined, written in the margin, or written in a larger and different script which aids you in searching for a specific name.

Baptismal Records
The purpose of baptismal registers, of course, was to identify the children who had been baptized. Therefore, these records will almost always provide the name of the child, the parents’ names, and the date of baptism. Usually there is more information, sometimes much more. Generally the further forward in time you search, the more information you will find in baptismal and other parish registers.

Usually the baptismal records will name the witnesses or sponsors (Godparents) at a baptism (often with their residence), as well as the mother’s maiden name. Very often they give the father’s status or occupation. The child’s birth date is common, especially in Protestant registers, and sometimes the family’s house number is in the record. Most parishes also included small villages outside the parish town, whose residents attended the parish. If the family lived in such a village, that too is usually noted.

Marriage Records
Marriage registers always identify the bride and groom, and the date of marriage, as well as the name of the person who performed the wedding. In addition, most also give the bride and groom’s ages, status or occupation, their parents’ names, and often their residence and/or birth place. If either had been married before, and was widowed, that information is included as part of their status. Some entries include the dates of the earlier banns (announcements) of the impending marriage. Usually this was done on the three Sundays preceding the wedding.

Burial Records
Burial registers are perhaps the least useful of the three major church records, as they often have less information, and may omit some persons, while baptismal and marriage registers virtually never overlook such events. Typically, burial records give the name of the deceased, date of burial, and often the age. In later records, they also often name parents (especially for burials of children or young, unmarried, adults). Other information may include the birth place of the deceased, occupation, marital status, and spouse’s name (whether deceased, or still alive).

Although they may contain less information, the fact that they usually begin at the same time as birth records, they can be useful for documenting one, two, or even three generations of family members who were born before the baptismal records began.

Family Registers
Many parish registers, particularly those in the states of Baden and Wuerttemberg, include an additional book, almost unique to German parishes. This is a family register. Typically it was created by a parish minister or priest (often beginning about 1808) to record families. Each family in the parish has their own page (or half a page) on which the minister entered the husband and wife’s names, with birth, death, and marriage information, followed by a list of the children, with birth dates, and sometimes more. Each page is usually numbered, so in the event a child grew up, had a family, and remained in that parish, the page on which he or she is listed as a parent is given in the child’s listing under the parents.

Genealogists recognize these as virtual family group sheets, where someone else has already gone through the parish registers and gathered the essential information on each family. While there may be some incorrect statements (typically mis-copied dates), these are an excellent way to begin research in a parish, and to quickly put family groups together. As these registers are derived from the original church parish records, it is wise to examine the original baptismal, marriage, and burial registers for exactness and accuracy.

Other Church Records
You may find other records in some parish registers. Some church books include confirmation, communion and member lists, minutes of the local meeting, and other acts of the parish leaders, including brief biographies of parish priests. However, these are less common, and not nearly as universal as the birth, marriage, and death information in the parish registers.

Confirmation records are chronological, and list the children (usually in their teen years) who became full communicant members of the parish during that year. Since they are simple lists of names, with a date at the top, searching these records may be a good way to learn which surnames are in that parish. You can also identify which children of ancestors you need to seek in earlier baptismal registers.

Indexes
Although church records are virtually universal (since the 1650’s anyway) for our German ancestors, and they have generally survived intact today, they are not easy to search. There are no true nationwide indexes to church records. Nor are there indexes covering any of the German states. However, some individual parishes do have indexes. These are handwritten and included with the parish register books, either at the front or the back (or, rarely, somewhere in the middle, depending on where blank pages were when the index was begun). Of course, if there are family registers, as noted above, they also act as a kind of register. In addition, be aware of two major databases which serve as partial indexes to German parish registers.

Vital Records Index
The same volunteer extraction project that produced the bulk of names found in the IGI has continued over the years, and many of the entries extracted from German parishes were never submitted to the IGI. These were released in 2000 as part of an on-going FamilySearch CD-ROM collection called Vital Records Index. The Western Europe portion of this index includes two regions with Germanic records. The Alpine Region (on one CD-ROM) includes about 160,000 records from Austria and Switzerland. The German Region (on eight CD-ROMs) includes over six million entries from eight German states.

However, you first need to know the name of the parish! Sometimes the name of your German’s home town may be a small village without a church. In such cases, it belonged to the parish in a neighboring town. Use a gazetteer for the German state or country you are searching to learn which parish your village belonged to. Also be certain that you use parish registers from the right denomination. In some places, both Catholic and Protestant parishes served the same town or village. You must also be certain you have the right parish. In German areas, there are often several towns with the same name, and therefore several parishes with the same name.

Family History Library Collection
The first place to seek the parish registers you want to search is the Family History Library Catalog. Over the past 50 years, the Family History Library has microfilmed thousands of church registers in dozens of countries. There is no single collection of such records that can even compare with the size of this collection.

Once these records are microfilmed, they are described in the library’s catalog, and available for use in the library, or one of its almost 4,000 centers around the world. Sometimes the original record holder restricts where the registers can be used, but generally the registers can be used by anyone in anyplace.

Now, if the parish records you are seeking are in the library catalog, and it is the correct parish, and the records cover the correct time period (some only cover years before or after your ancestor was there), you are home free! Now you just need to read that (sometimes) awful handwriting.

Church Record Archives

However, many parish registers are not available through the Family History Library and its collection. Many are stored at archives in the old country. Often these are church archives, usually established at the diocesan (synod) level.

It can be difficult to learn at which archives the parish registers may be kept. The Family History Library and many other major research libraries may have a published inventory of the materials at an archive. Such inventories are quite common for church records archives. Using such sources, you will learn which parish registers, and which years of those registers, are kept at a particular archive. Once you learn that, you can contact the archives about searching the records. Most archives will let you search the records if you come in person. Most will also do searches for you, for a fee. Therefore, you should write to the archive to learn about their research policy and services. Also, you might want to hire a local researcher who is familiar with the records and the archive, to do your research for you.

You can find addresses of church record archives (and other foreign archives) in research directories, which exist for most major countries. It is also common to write directly to the current parish and inquire about the status of the registers. You can request he search the records, and then provide the information you know about the ancestor. Be certain to ask if the registers are still at the parish, and if not, where they are kept.

Individual Parishes
Many parish registers have not been microfilmed, or gathered into local, regional or state archives. Rather, they still reside in the parish where they were begun almost 400 (or more) years ago. A simple letter to the parish may be all it takes to obtain copies, or extracts, from the parish. For help in writing such a letter in German, and determining the address of a parish, see “Records by Mail from Germany” in the July-August 2001 issue of the Genealogical Helper.

Any way you go about it, it is fun and exciting to explore a new side of your ancestry. So, despite the language barrier, take off and begin the hunt for your German ancestors. The wealth of information in the records, and the general condition of the records, will make you wish all your ancestors were in such great records!

Read More About It
Humphrey, John T. Understanding and Using Baptismal Records. Washington, D.C.: Humphrey Publications, 1996.
Smith, Kenneth Lee. German Church Books : Beyond the Basics. Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1989.

	Kory Meyerink is the editor, and primary author of Ancestry’s recent major reference book, Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records. Currently a professional researcher with ProGenealogists.com, he lives in Salt Lake City. The former publications coordinator for the Family History Library, past president of the Utah Genealogical Association, and founding director of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, he is accredited in four different areas, including Germany. Kory has written extensively in magazines and journals during his 20 years in genealogy. A popular lecturer at national and state conferences, he also teaches for Brigham Young University at their Salt Lake City extension. He looks forward to hearing from you; contact him at: .