Saturday, February 14, 2009

Interesting German genealogy site

Reader Ron Chard from Florida emailed me about a German genealogy resource he found. Here is his email:

"...I have been hunting for my wife's grandfather Detert Lueken Aden's family back in Germany for sometime now. Two weeks ago I Google'd his name (had done so in the past with no luck) and was pointed to a German website at http://www.ortsfamilienbuecher.de/ At this website it pointed me to a link at "Ostfriesland Stedesdorf, Burhafe, Dunum (26427)". Lo and behold, there he was along with his ancestors in Ostfriesland, Prussia. When you access the Ostfriesland link, you can change the language to English, which made searching much easier for me as I have no knowledge of the German language.

"There looks to be over a hundred different databases for free access at this site, mostly in Germany, but it does include several other countries in Europe. You are provided a contact person for the database you are looking at, contact email address, and source information. I forwarded information pertaining to Detert's American family, which was quickly added to his German data.
"Thought you might want to take a look at this site and possibly pass it along on your blog to those hunting for their elusive German ancestors."

Thank you, Ron! It looks like an interesting site - but I can't figure much out without having some German language skills. I'm going to pass it along to the people in the local German Research Association also.

One of the lessons learned here, by myself, is to regularly put your elusive ancestor names into search engines. So much material is added online every day, week, month and year that you might be surprised to find a pearl in the hog trough of genealogy web sites.

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