Category: German Genealogy

Recently my great Aunt Anneliese Schmitt, born Anna Marie Elizabeth Burghardt on 2 February 1926 in Kassel Germany, passed away. I never meet Anneliese in person but emailed with her for several years and loved getting to know her and learn more about my Germany family. Anneliese (Burghardt) and Wilhelm Schmitt, my great aunt and… Continue reading My Great Aunt Anneliese.

Researching your family can be sad at times. Especially when you see what the death rate was. I have come across many families who have lost several children. One family in particular pulled at my heartstrings. Catherine Gossmann is my 3rd great-grand aunt. Her parents are Jost Heinrich Gossman and Gertrud Elisabeth Thielemann, my 4th… Continue reading The Death of Loved Ones.

Most of the time proving sibling's is easy, you see a baptism record with the same parents listed and in the same town or village location, then they are likely siblings. In the United States you can prove families with census records, but in Germany I have not found any census records or anything that… Continue reading Proving Family Connections.

One of the most frustrating parts, for me, of researching German genealogy is names. It seems they name their children with the same names repeatedly. Usually if a baby or young child died and they had another child of the same sex they would use the name over again. I have seen this in several… Continue reading Same Names! Sigh….

That I did not need to travel to Germany to find my Family! It has been hard for me to trace my German family and in 2017 I had the opportunity to travel to my grandmother's (Anne Burghardt) home town of Kassel, Germany. I had been researching on and off for about 10 years but… Continue reading After traveling to Germany for family history research, this is what I learned!

My journey into genealogy started about 12 years ago in 2007. My grandmother was born in 1928 in Hesse, Kassel Germany and I have always been fascinated with anything German and WWII. I did ask my grandmother questions and tried to find out what it was like living in German, especially during WWII. She never… Continue reading My Journey into German Genealogy!

In today’s digital age, genealogy is easier that it has been in the past. We do not have to travel to every place our ancestors lived to find out about their lives. Over the years I feel like I have learned so much about the lives of my ancestors. Learning about the lives of my… Continue reading My Tips and Tricks for German Genealogy!