While searching for your ancestors in historical records, occasionally, you'll come across records documenting something of historical significance. I wanted to post this because, while doing a little bit of research on the history of the area my Panther family is from, I noticed that the church record documenting the death of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen is not posted anywhere on the web. Grimmelshausen fought in the Thirty Years War and is a noted German literary figure.
Showing posts with label Ulm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulm. Show all posts
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Moriz Panther Biography
Moriz Panther, my great-great-grandfather, was born in Stadelhofen, A. Achern Ortenaukreis, Baden. His parents, Franz Joseph Panther and Genovefa Schindler, moved the family from Stadelhofen to Mösbach some time after the children were born.
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| Moriz Panther Baptismal Record |
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Spelling of Names in Genealogy Records
I spoke to a second cousin of mine on the phone last night. He had recently discovered the information about the Panther family. This is despite the fact that I posted information on RootsWeb immediately after the discovery and he saw these posts. He just didn't realize it was his family because of the spelling of his great-grandfather's name. That is what prompted me to write this post. A portion of this post was in the Panther Family History book.
Stephen, I'm very glad you were able to determine this was your family. I'm happy to hear your family is enjoying the information!
Whenever you're looking at records that could pertain to your family, keep in mind that prior to modern times, especially before about 1900, spelling was not important. Many people were illiterate prior to about 1800 and for those that could read and write, spelling was unimportant. As long as the pronunciation was correct, it didn’t matter how you spelled it. For example, we’ve seen the surname of Panther spelled as Panter and Pantzer but the most common spelling seen is Panther.
Here is a list of a few of the names found in the Ulm and Moesbach area church books. The first listed is the most common way found of spelling it and the rest are other spellings found in the books.
Panther – Panter, Pantzer
Birk – Burk, Burck, Birck
Klumpp – Klump, Klumpf
Hürt - Hirt
Sutter – Suter, Sutterer
Müller – Miller
Grafsig – Kräfsig
Hanle – Hinle, Heinle
Allgeyer – Algeier, Algeyer, Allgeier
In addition, frequently, especially in the earlier Latin records, the last names of females had the suffix “-in” added to the end. For example, Maria Anna Allgeier was listed and signed her name as Maria Anna Allgeierin and Margareta Armbruster was listed as Margareta Armbrusterin.
When it comes to first names, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, in the church books, especially in the earlier Latin text, most of the names were in their Latin form. For example, you wouldn’t find Franz Joseph but you would frequently find Franciscus Josephus and you wouldn’t find Johann Adam, you would find Joannes Adamus. My great-grandfather, Aloysius Panther, prior to the discovery of his birthplace, I had seen his first name spelled as Aloysius, Alois, Alos and even Aaron. In the Moesbach church records, his name is spelled as Aloys. These are some very different names but they all referred to the same person. In addition, just as spelling didn’t matter for last names, it didn’t matter for first names either.
Another issue about first names is that many times, you’ll find multiple children born to the same parents having the same first name and sometimes also the same middle name. When a child dies young, many times the parents would name a child born later the same name as their deceased child, resulting in many children recorded to the same parents having the exact same first and middle names. Also, a large percentage of boys were named Joannes and a large percentage of girls were named Maria. They would then have different middle names. Because of this, a family may have a Joannes Adamus, a Joannes Franciscus and a Joannes Jacobus along with a Maria Anna, a Maria Theresia and a Maria Salomea all living at the same time. These would be known as Adam, Francis and Jacob and Anna, Theresia and Salomea respectively.
Stephen, I'm very glad you were able to determine this was your family. I'm happy to hear your family is enjoying the information!
Whenever you're looking at records that could pertain to your family, keep in mind that prior to modern times, especially before about 1900, spelling was not important. Many people were illiterate prior to about 1800 and for those that could read and write, spelling was unimportant. As long as the pronunciation was correct, it didn’t matter how you spelled it. For example, we’ve seen the surname of Panther spelled as Panter and Pantzer but the most common spelling seen is Panther.
Here is a list of a few of the names found in the Ulm and Moesbach area church books. The first listed is the most common way found of spelling it and the rest are other spellings found in the books.
Panther – Panter, Pantzer
Birk – Burk, Burck, Birck
Klumpp – Klump, Klumpf
Hürt - Hirt
Sutter – Suter, Sutterer
Müller – Miller
Grafsig – Kräfsig
Hanle – Hinle, Heinle
Allgeyer – Algeier, Algeyer, Allgeier
In addition, frequently, especially in the earlier Latin records, the last names of females had the suffix “-in” added to the end. For example, Maria Anna Allgeier was listed and signed her name as Maria Anna Allgeierin and Margareta Armbruster was listed as Margareta Armbrusterin.
When it comes to first names, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, in the church books, especially in the earlier Latin text, most of the names were in their Latin form. For example, you wouldn’t find Franz Joseph but you would frequently find Franciscus Josephus and you wouldn’t find Johann Adam, you would find Joannes Adamus. My great-grandfather, Aloysius Panther, prior to the discovery of his birthplace, I had seen his first name spelled as Aloysius, Alois, Alos and even Aaron. In the Moesbach church records, his name is spelled as Aloys. These are some very different names but they all referred to the same person. In addition, just as spelling didn’t matter for last names, it didn’t matter for first names either.
Another issue about first names is that many times, you’ll find multiple children born to the same parents having the same first name and sometimes also the same middle name. When a child dies young, many times the parents would name a child born later the same name as their deceased child, resulting in many children recorded to the same parents having the exact same first and middle names. Also, a large percentage of boys were named Joannes and a large percentage of girls were named Maria. They would then have different middle names. Because of this, a family may have a Joannes Adamus, a Joannes Franciscus and a Joannes Jacobus along with a Maria Anna, a Maria Theresia and a Maria Salomea all living at the same time. These would be known as Adam, Francis and Jacob and Anna, Theresia and Salomea respectively.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Ancestors of Helmut Doll
I just finished researching the ancestors of Helmut Doll, my third-cousin from Moesbach, A. Achern, Baden, Germany. His ancestors are well rooted around the village and the number of his ancestors found is amazing. I found 331 of his ancestors around the Moesbach, Stadelhofen, Erlach and Ulm area. I'm sorry this wasn't done soon enough for him to see it. Here is his ancestor chart:
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
History of My Family History Research Project
It was back in grade school. I don't recall all the details but we were supposed to draw up a family tree. My mother said she thought a distant cousin of hers had traced our tree WAY back to around the time of Alexander the Great. We never did see who might have done that research or confirm it. My tree for that assignment consisted of me, my parents, my grandparents and one single great-grandfather. I was definitely interested in finding out more but I didn't know how to do it.
About 30 years later, my mother was given the Panther family history book, written by Mary Ann Messer and Anita Vantiger. It had a lot of information but nothing beyond my great-grandparents on that branch of the tree. I decided to use this information to start a genealogy database using Personal Ancestral File, put out by Family Search and the Mormon Church. There were a lot of names in my newly created database but it didn't go very far back in time.
A year or two later, my mother gave me a partial transcription of the Menke family history by Jim Menke. I proceeded to put that information into my database. This branch didn't have many names but it went back quite a ways. It was a family twig, going back to my 6x-great-grandparents, about the year 1700 in and around Schwagstorf, Hanover, Germany. I was very happy. I still knew nothing about my father's ancestors other than his parents and I knew nothing more of the Panther family.
I had mentioned my desire to research our family history to my mother and she mentioned a book sent to my brother from a Sister Catherine Seemann. Sister Catherine is a nun in Canada that researched the Bixenman family. Philomena Bixenman was my great-grandmother. I had never heard of her before. My brother gave me the book. In it was a letter addressed to both him and me! Apparently since he wasn't interested, he assumed I wasn't either. I took the book and began transferring the information into my database. During my research, I discovered that a family we grew up with and knew in our hometown (which, by the way is nowhere near where either of my parents grew up) were our distant cousins. This book told me who my great-grandfather was on my dad's dad's side and also gave a huge amount of information of my great-grandmother's ancestors on this branch. This brought my family history information back to my 5x-great-grandparents on this branch around Treherz, Baden, Germany. The difference is that there were a few more of the ancestors filling out the tree so this branch was more than the twig of my Menke branch.
Still, no information about the Panther family, which I've always had a fascination with. I guess I just love the name, plus it was the last name of the cousins I hung out with during our visits back to my mom and dad's home town area. I kept looking for them. We were always told they were from Baden-Baden, Germany. I looked at the church records from Baden-Baden and didn't find my great-grandfather there. I started looking through the church records, one village at a time, in the various villages south of Baden-Baden. I did a search on familysearch.org for anyone of this last name. When I found one, I ordered the microfilm from the Mormon Church to see if I could find the baptismal record of my great-grandfather. I had found many Panthers in Stadelhofen but not my great-grandfather. Eventually, the daughter of my cousin found them in Moesbach. I was just as happy about it as she was. We worked together using images that were online but once these were exhausted, I ordered microfilm from the Mormon Church. Eventually, I discovered that my great-great-great-grandfather had moved to Moesbach from Stadelhofen. Those Panthers I had found in Stadelhofen actually were my relations. I just didn't know it when I found them! I used the microfilms of the Moesbach, Stadelhofen and Ulm area of Baden, Germany. I ended up scanning in ALL of the pages of the church books I had there. Now I have them all on my hard drive to search at my leisure. I've traced this branch of my family tree back to 27 of my 8x-great-grandparents and 42 of my 7x-great-grandparents. I've also been researching the ancestry of others from this area. Call it an addiction but if the information is there and someone wants it, I want to provide it to them.
Now, I've also started an indexing project. I hope to index the baptismal, marriage and death records of ALL of these church records. This way, if anyone is from this area, I would have a relatively easy time researching their ancestry. Eventually, once it's all indexed, I'd like to import all the individuals into a database so we could potentially have the entire ancestry (that is available from these church records) of anyone from these villages. I think that wraps up any projects I may be able to work on for the next 50 years!
About 30 years later, my mother was given the Panther family history book, written by Mary Ann Messer and Anita Vantiger. It had a lot of information but nothing beyond my great-grandparents on that branch of the tree. I decided to use this information to start a genealogy database using Personal Ancestral File, put out by Family Search and the Mormon Church. There were a lot of names in my newly created database but it didn't go very far back in time.
A year or two later, my mother gave me a partial transcription of the Menke family history by Jim Menke. I proceeded to put that information into my database. This branch didn't have many names but it went back quite a ways. It was a family twig, going back to my 6x-great-grandparents, about the year 1700 in and around Schwagstorf, Hanover, Germany. I was very happy. I still knew nothing about my father's ancestors other than his parents and I knew nothing more of the Panther family.
I had mentioned my desire to research our family history to my mother and she mentioned a book sent to my brother from a Sister Catherine Seemann. Sister Catherine is a nun in Canada that researched the Bixenman family. Philomena Bixenman was my great-grandmother. I had never heard of her before. My brother gave me the book. In it was a letter addressed to both him and me! Apparently since he wasn't interested, he assumed I wasn't either. I took the book and began transferring the information into my database. During my research, I discovered that a family we grew up with and knew in our hometown (which, by the way is nowhere near where either of my parents grew up) were our distant cousins. This book told me who my great-grandfather was on my dad's dad's side and also gave a huge amount of information of my great-grandmother's ancestors on this branch. This brought my family history information back to my 5x-great-grandparents on this branch around Treherz, Baden, Germany. The difference is that there were a few more of the ancestors filling out the tree so this branch was more than the twig of my Menke branch.
Still, no information about the Panther family, which I've always had a fascination with. I guess I just love the name, plus it was the last name of the cousins I hung out with during our visits back to my mom and dad's home town area. I kept looking for them. We were always told they were from Baden-Baden, Germany. I looked at the church records from Baden-Baden and didn't find my great-grandfather there. I started looking through the church records, one village at a time, in the various villages south of Baden-Baden. I did a search on familysearch.org for anyone of this last name. When I found one, I ordered the microfilm from the Mormon Church to see if I could find the baptismal record of my great-grandfather. I had found many Panthers in Stadelhofen but not my great-grandfather. Eventually, the daughter of my cousin found them in Moesbach. I was just as happy about it as she was. We worked together using images that were online but once these were exhausted, I ordered microfilm from the Mormon Church. Eventually, I discovered that my great-great-great-grandfather had moved to Moesbach from Stadelhofen. Those Panthers I had found in Stadelhofen actually were my relations. I just didn't know it when I found them! I used the microfilms of the Moesbach, Stadelhofen and Ulm area of Baden, Germany. I ended up scanning in ALL of the pages of the church books I had there. Now I have them all on my hard drive to search at my leisure. I've traced this branch of my family tree back to 27 of my 8x-great-grandparents and 42 of my 7x-great-grandparents. I've also been researching the ancestry of others from this area. Call it an addiction but if the information is there and someone wants it, I want to provide it to them.
Now, I've also started an indexing project. I hope to index the baptismal, marriage and death records of ALL of these church records. This way, if anyone is from this area, I would have a relatively easy time researching their ancestry. Eventually, once it's all indexed, I'd like to import all the individuals into a database so we could potentially have the entire ancestry (that is available from these church records) of anyone from these villages. I think that wraps up any projects I may be able to work on for the next 50 years!
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Sharing Documentation Files with BitTorrent Sync
This is meant to be a blog about genealogy, my projects and tools and techniques I've found helpful in my genealogy hobby. This entry does fit that description because it is focusing on a tool that I am just now beginning to use to backup my data. Forgive my segways into technological descriptions. I'm a technology geek at heart and I'm excited about this new piece of software.
I have about 60 gigabytes of scanned images from the church books of Ulm and Moesbach, A. Achern area of Baden, Germany. It took six months of work to scan in virtually all of their church book images. I have the images backed up onto my external hard drive but I definitely don't want to have to rely on one piece of hardware. What if my external hard drive fails? All my hard work would be gone. In addition, there are at least a couple of people, likely several more, that would be interested in having access to these files. What can I use to solve both of these problems?
First, I'd like to give a quick lesson in BitTorrent technology. BitTorrent is a piece of software you can install on your computer. You then find BitTorrent "seeds", which are files served up from a web server that tells the BitTorrent software about the file. The trick to this technology is that once the download starts for several people, they start downloading different bits of the file. Then new clients wanting to download the file using the BitTorrent software download bits of the file from all the other clients downloading it. This means that the first clients will download a portion (but different portions) of the file from the first server, then all the other clients will download from the initial host machine and from each other. This takes a load off of the originating server and spreads the workload and bandwidth use around to all the clients downloading the file.
The sad part is that this wonderful piece of software is mostly known for pirating large files such as movies, not for its other (legal) uses.
Now, BitTorrent has released a new piece of software, known as BitTorrent Sync. With this software, I have shared up the folders of my church book scans. Anyone that would like a copy of them just needs to install BitTorrent Sync and give it the secret key set up on my share. This will allow you to download a copy of my scans for your own use. Just as important, it provides a backup for all my hard work.
If you are interested in the scans of the Ulm A. Achern church book scans from 1654 to 1788 (for births) and from 1654 to about 1900 (for marriages and deaths) and the Moesbach A. Achern church book scans from 1811 to about 1900 (for births, marriages and deaths), please let me know. I'll give you the key to my share and you can begin downloading a copy for yourself and do me a favor by acting as my backup.
A couple of notes about this software and how I've set it up:
First, NEVER share anything of confidential nature. No matter how secure you believe it is, someone someday will hack into it. I'm sharing what is essentially public knowledge with this share. Anyone could have access to it if they put in the effort to access the books or the microfilm of the books and scanning it in themselves. I want to make it easier for them.
Second, be sure to go into the configuration options of the software. You'll want to limit the amount of bandwidth it uses. Most Internet service providers have some sort of cap on their data usage, even if they don't publicize it. The size of these files is like downloading 13 high quality DVD movies. That's a huge amount of data. I've capped my upload and download speed for this software. Yes, this means it will take a very long time for it to be fully uploaded, but it's better than the speed I had prior to today, which was zero. Given some time, all these scan files will be backed up to the hard drives of others that would like to see them. Depending on how things look going forward, I may increase or decrease this speed. This is new software and I'll need to keep an eye on on it to make sure things work out smoothly.
Let me know what you think by commenting below or dropping me an email. Thanks!
--Matt
I have about 60 gigabytes of scanned images from the church books of Ulm and Moesbach, A. Achern area of Baden, Germany. It took six months of work to scan in virtually all of their church book images. I have the images backed up onto my external hard drive but I definitely don't want to have to rely on one piece of hardware. What if my external hard drive fails? All my hard work would be gone. In addition, there are at least a couple of people, likely several more, that would be interested in having access to these files. What can I use to solve both of these problems?
First, I'd like to give a quick lesson in BitTorrent technology. BitTorrent is a piece of software you can install on your computer. You then find BitTorrent "seeds", which are files served up from a web server that tells the BitTorrent software about the file. The trick to this technology is that once the download starts for several people, they start downloading different bits of the file. Then new clients wanting to download the file using the BitTorrent software download bits of the file from all the other clients downloading it. This means that the first clients will download a portion (but different portions) of the file from the first server, then all the other clients will download from the initial host machine and from each other. This takes a load off of the originating server and spreads the workload and bandwidth use around to all the clients downloading the file.
The sad part is that this wonderful piece of software is mostly known for pirating large files such as movies, not for its other (legal) uses.
Now, BitTorrent has released a new piece of software, known as BitTorrent Sync. With this software, I have shared up the folders of my church book scans. Anyone that would like a copy of them just needs to install BitTorrent Sync and give it the secret key set up on my share. This will allow you to download a copy of my scans for your own use. Just as important, it provides a backup for all my hard work.
If you are interested in the scans of the Ulm A. Achern church book scans from 1654 to 1788 (for births) and from 1654 to about 1900 (for marriages and deaths) and the Moesbach A. Achern church book scans from 1811 to about 1900 (for births, marriages and deaths), please let me know. I'll give you the key to my share and you can begin downloading a copy for yourself and do me a favor by acting as my backup.
A couple of notes about this software and how I've set it up:
First, NEVER share anything of confidential nature. No matter how secure you believe it is, someone someday will hack into it. I'm sharing what is essentially public knowledge with this share. Anyone could have access to it if they put in the effort to access the books or the microfilm of the books and scanning it in themselves. I want to make it easier for them.
Second, be sure to go into the configuration options of the software. You'll want to limit the amount of bandwidth it uses. Most Internet service providers have some sort of cap on their data usage, even if they don't publicize it. The size of these files is like downloading 13 high quality DVD movies. That's a huge amount of data. I've capped my upload and download speed for this software. Yes, this means it will take a very long time for it to be fully uploaded, but it's better than the speed I had prior to today, which was zero. Given some time, all these scan files will be backed up to the hard drives of others that would like to see them. Depending on how things look going forward, I may increase or decrease this speed. This is new software and I'll need to keep an eye on on it to make sure things work out smoothly.
Let me know what you think by commenting below or dropping me an email. Thanks!
--Matt
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Family History Center Presentation
This post is essentially the presentation I made at my local Family History Center last summer. I had had such great success tracking down my Panther ancestors, they wanted me to give a presentation showing how it happened, hoping to give pointers to others trying to find their ancestors in Germany. This is slightly changed due to one BIG mistake I made in my research. This one has the correct information on the ship, the SS Hanover. My initial research had found the Hanover, but it ends up it was the Hanover IV, which is of a completely different era of ship travel. Thankfully (and embarrassingly) there was a ship expert in attendance who pointed out my mistake and helped me find more information about their voyage.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Reininger Researching Coming to an End (For Now)
Back in January, Norbert Reininger asked about Ludwig Hodapp, who I showed as marrying Genovefa Ingert in 1862. His information had him marrying Mathilda Reininger, who was the daughter of Benjamin Reininger, Norbert's great-great-grandfather. It ends up we were talking about two different Ludwig Hodapps. Mathilde was the sister of his grandfather Remigius. He asked if I could look into the family of her parents, Benjamin Reininger and Amalia Möglich.
I don't have access to the later baptismal records of Ulm, Baden, Geramany like I do Mösbach but all of the earlier records were in Ulm so I have those. I used the birth dates that Norbert provided for them and began researching them in the latest Ulm records I have. The cutoff for my records is about 1800. I didn't have the baptismal records for Benjamin or Amalia or for his parents, however I did have them for Amalia's parents and for many branches of Benjamin's ancestors on his father's side. In the end, I was able to track down 93 of Norbert Reininger's grandfather's ancestors.
A couple of the branches could "only" be traced back to Remigius' great-grandparents. However, we also found 18 of his 5x-great-grandparents and 5 of his 6x-great-grandparents. The earliest records we found were for Nicolai Reininger's marriage to Eva Kranss in 1669 and Michael Rummel's marriage to Susanna Kramer in 1665.
Norbert and I share a pair of ancestors, shown in this chart as Remigius' 5x-great-grandparents Simon Frischmann and his wife Jacobea Eldinger. Also shown in Jacobia's father, Hanss Eldinger. Unfortunately, we haven't yet connected his Panther ancestors to mine but given they were from the same vicinity as my Panther line, I'm very confident we're related on these lines also. We're also likely related on Baudendistel and Schindler lines, but given the number of families with these surnames in the area, our connection here could be quite a ways back.
Below is the ancestor chart showing the ancestors of Remigius Reininger, born September 14, 1856 in Ulm, Baden, Germany.
I don't have access to the later baptismal records of Ulm, Baden, Geramany like I do Mösbach but all of the earlier records were in Ulm so I have those. I used the birth dates that Norbert provided for them and began researching them in the latest Ulm records I have. The cutoff for my records is about 1800. I didn't have the baptismal records for Benjamin or Amalia or for his parents, however I did have them for Amalia's parents and for many branches of Benjamin's ancestors on his father's side. In the end, I was able to track down 93 of Norbert Reininger's grandfather's ancestors.
A couple of the branches could "only" be traced back to Remigius' great-grandparents. However, we also found 18 of his 5x-great-grandparents and 5 of his 6x-great-grandparents. The earliest records we found were for Nicolai Reininger's marriage to Eva Kranss in 1669 and Michael Rummel's marriage to Susanna Kramer in 1665.
Norbert and I share a pair of ancestors, shown in this chart as Remigius' 5x-great-grandparents Simon Frischmann and his wife Jacobea Eldinger. Also shown in Jacobia's father, Hanss Eldinger. Unfortunately, we haven't yet connected his Panther ancestors to mine but given they were from the same vicinity as my Panther line, I'm very confident we're related on these lines also. We're also likely related on Baudendistel and Schindler lines, but given the number of families with these surnames in the area, our connection here could be quite a ways back.
Below is the ancestor chart showing the ancestors of Remigius Reininger, born September 14, 1856 in Ulm, Baden, Germany.
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