Category Archives: Genealogy tips

When in Germany, I visited the Bremerhaven Auswandererhaus, where many genealogist types do research. A large number of Germans left for the Americas (New Zealand and Australia, too) via the northern ports at Hamburg and Bremerhaven. However, it’s not the route my ancestor Michael Harm took from Freinsheim in the Rhineland-Palatinate. He went through the French port at Le Havre, and he wasn’t the only one. According to Freinsheim emigration records, many of its citizens took a similar route in the 19th century.

The map here was made in 1596, so it’s a far cry from 1857 when it comes to locations of cities and borders, but nonetheless, I provide it here with Freinsheim inked in, showing also the usual route through Paris to Le Havre, in order to demonstrate how the French port of departure made sense geographically. It also made sense politically. Many young men who left snuck out of the country, since they were liable for military duty in the Bavarian-controlled Palatinate of the day. It seems the French were willing to look the other way when it came to the paperwork. Hence, consider Le Havre, France another place to look for your ancestors emigrating from southwestern Germany.

This cover of the 27th Sängerfest German Singing Festival, held in 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio, is courtesy of The Western Reserve Historical Society Library. (Double-click on it to enlarge) The program alone is 101 pages. Seventy different songs were presented in afternoon and evening concerts, ranging from Schubert’s “The Wanderer” to Mendelssohn’s “Walpurgis-Night.”

Included in the program is a history of the North American Sängerbund, which began in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1849. At the first singing festival, five societies came together from nearby towns, for a total of 118 singers. By 1860, there were 25 societies and 450 singers. In 1868, after a hiatus during the Civil War, there were 58 societies and 1200 singers. For a complete history of the society, still in existence today, visit their web site at Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund.

About a month ago, a friend told me about a German music program put on by the Sacramento German Genealogical Society (SGGS): Liedermatinée: an Afternoon of Favorite German Songs with Michael Mayer-Kielmann. Their program offered songs by Brahms and Haydn and the 20th century Heino, as well as classic folk songs like Silcher’s Lorelei. I have since learned the SGGS is a very active organization, with over 900 members and an award-winning journal, Der Blumenbaum.

How I would have loved to hear the SGGS program, and the 1893 Cleveland concerts, too. In the German song tradition, musicians such as Schubert and Silcher and countless others set poetry (of Goethe, Heine, Schiller and so on) to music. Popular music is always a favorite, as evidenced in this quote from the 1893 Sängerfest program: “Of all numbers on the programme the “Volkslieder” (Folks’ Songs) invariably please the most. In the first place, the singers prefer them, (because they require less study), secondly, because the sound effects of a grand chorus in sustained, not polyphonic works, are brought out better, and thirdly, the audience recognizes dear old friends in them, and as it requires no exertion to follow the music, the enjoyment is the greater.”

When writing about our ancestors, sometimes we want to find not only the date, but also the day of the week. My ancestor Michael Harm arrived in New York Harbor on the packet ship Helvetia on June 30, 1857. What day, exactly, was that? There are various sites to help us figure this out, such as Ancestor Search.

And here’s a find, specifically for the 19th century, through the University of Pittsburgh Library System. A digitized publication from 1886, called “The 19th Century Almanac: A complete calendar from 1800 to 1900.” There are options for viewing the almanac, depending on the format (and power of your computer). Below is a page snipped from the alamanac. (Double-click to enlarge.)

Especially fun are lists of important events in a given year. Here are the events of 1853.

Since the Almanac was published in 1886, what about 1887 and following, the “time that is to come”? In those years, the Almanac lists upcoming presidential elections and congresses and so on, and centennial events from 1787 to 1800. There are also pithy quotes at the bottom of each page. For 1887, it’s:

“We take no note of time, but from its loss.”

My relatives in Freinsheim discovered a packet of old letters, from early in the 1840s up into the 20th century, from relatives who emigrated from the Rhineland-Palatinate to Cleveland, Ohio. They’re written not only in German, but in Alte Deutsche Schrift (Old German Script), or Kurrentschrift, based on medieval cursive.

Here’s a sample of the handwriting, written by Johann Rapparlie. This snippet says:

Cleveland on the 14th November, 1847
Much loved brother-in-law and sister-in-law,
With great joy I pick up the pen to let you know about our matters how all of us are here amongst each other in Cleveland.

Sütterlin script is named after the graphic artist who standardized the Old German Script, but that did not happen until 1911. Before then, variants were the rule, not the exception. The cursive is a problem to anyone lucky enough to possess old letters, church records, land deeds, and so on, hand-written in German.

It’s also a problem for those of us researching German ancestry, because signatures of Germans on, say, marriage documents, may have been typed up by people who knew only the English alphabet. Here’s just one example. I have had great difficulty finding my ancestor George Scheuermann. It turns out the Old German Script is one source of the problem. The letter “e”, in Old German Script, looks like this: which strongly resembles the English cursive “n”.

This revelation occurred to me on a recent visit to the Ohio Historical Society archives in Columbus. In the typed-up book of Cuyahoga marriages in the 1840s and 1850s, I found him at last.

Fortunately, like most challenges of the 21st century, there is help on the web.
Here You Can Learn Suetterlin
Write Your Name in Suetterlin