Heritage Album

how to trace my german family tree?

any good free websites?

Public Comments

1. You search it one generation at a time. The best place to go is your library, not online. There's a series of census records that your library has which will be very helpful. Once you identify your immigrant ancestor, look for a series of books in the library called "Germans to America". (Yes, it is online, but very expensive to access). That will tell you when your ancestor left, the port he left, the date/port of arrival and name of the ship. It will also give you the names of everyone traveling with him. As for tracing the name inside Germany, that depends on several factors. Germany didn't unify until 1871. Prior to that there were no centralized or standardized record-keeping procedures. The majority of census records do exist, even after the multitude of wars. Most of the church records from Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches still exist and are the most consistent records available for us. The LDS can help you order both German census and German church (kerk/e) records. Military records also exist and are in regional archives. You'll need to know which prince or duke your ancestor served to find the records. The only group of records that are sadly missing and irreplaceable are the Bremen passenger records. They didn't survive WWII.
2. This basic outline may help you with your search: Basic Research Guide for German Genealogy http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/outline.html If you've already traced your line back to your German immigrant ancestor you can skip down to the section called "Find your Immigrant Ancestor." To find records in Germany you will first need to know the town in Germany your ancestor is from. There are tips listed there to help.