Getting to the Roots of Your Family - RootsWeb - Ancestry.com

Schul-Atlas, published 1905 and 1914, includes maps similar to
Westermann’s Historischer Atlas, which can be magnified for easier reading.
• The place is [mis-]spelled phonetically
Even beautifully written places can be misspelled. Locate other towns found on the list to see if they
have anything in common. If several are located in the same area, check that area for a phonetic or
misspelled version of “your” town.
The place name may have been scrambled, such as “Ehrenzimberg” – [Herrenzimmern], abbreviated
[Grubenhagen vs. Kirchgrubenhagen], or spelled phonetically [Kuechenbach vs. Kirchenbach].
“Reverse-sort indexes” and online gazetteers are good tools for decoding scrambled place names. For
former “West Germany”, go to www.jewishgen.org/Communities/ . Choose “Search for places by
name”. You can limit the search to Germany [1960s], using “contains”, “begins with”, or the Daitch-
Mokotoff Soundex as search criteria.
Links to various online gazetteers are found in the GenWiki at http://www.genealogy.net/genealogy
and http://www.progenealogists.com/germany/ . Many can be used like reverse-sort gazetteers by
using “Control f” to search for places with a given ending.
Sometimes an immigrant’s origin can be found by checking the surname distribution and finding areas
where the name is common. The German online telephone book www.dastelefonbuch.de and its visual
counterpart GeoGen at http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/Default.aspx are useful tools for this
approach.
Example:
Georg Heinrich Wendeln’s declaration of intention to become a U.S. citizen listed “Gardel, Germany” as his birth place and last
foreign residence. He was Catholic. Family tradition stated that he was from Western Germany.
Solution:
1. The only place called “Gardel” found in Meyer’s was a hamlet associated with Gleiwitz in Silesia, now in Poland. The records of
this town have not been filmed.
2. The surname “Wendeln” is not that common, and the tradition was that the emigrant came from the Western part of Germany,
so the current German telephone book was checked for possible concentrations of the surname. Many Wendeln listings were found
in former Southern Oldenburg, a Catholic area. The ancestor’s baptism was located in Garrel, Amt Cloppenburg, Oldenburg.
If the correct place still can’t be found, go back to the basics [check censuses, vital records, church
records, published sources etc.] and look for more clues. Investigate all potential relatives. Search
collateral lines and follow up on every new clue!
• Document every member of the family and all in-laws.
• Keep in mind possible surname changes [i.e. Schwarzenbach to Blackcreek/Blackrick/Black]
• Look for others from the same country.
• Learn about neighbors and associates.
Learn about the history of the area (settlement patterns etc.).