Are there any researchers in the Lingen or Gersten area to do research on family names? Any suggestions are appreciated.
Have you looked here?
http://www.emslanders.com/
Gersten is near the parish Lengerich (Catholic). Look around that site -
you'll find a lot of interesting information.
There is a center for Catholic church records in Meppen listed on that
site.
Barbara
Hi Pat,
maybe you found somone there:
http://www.online-ofb.de/lingen/
and maybe I could help for the persons from Lingen
regards
Heike (Bund)
The best place would be to start here by giving whatever infomation you have
and asking about what you wish to know. In the city of Lingen there are at
least three different church denominations. It would help to know which
religion your people adhered to. Normally they would have been Reforned or
Lutheran. Catholics were somewhat disadvantaged there. Until 1824 and only
after Prussia took over they were not permitted any official function in
government. There is a Bürgerbuch from 1602-1809 which lists all people who
became citizens of the town.
I have in front of me the History of Lingen from 975-1975. Lots of
interesting stuff in there.
Fred
Fred,
I thought that most of the people in Emsland area were Catholic. I
guess you can't presume such things. Thanks for that information.
Barbara
:Lingen was part of the old Grafschaft Lingen. The history of the Emsland is
not homogeneous by any means. The name wasn't even invented until the end of
the 13th century and only because the various territorial or geo-political
entities within it all had some connection to the Ems river. It was really a
rather sparsely populated area until more recent times. Today the Landkreis
Emsland is a rather large county. Actually it is the largest in the state of
Lower Saxony and the 2nd largest in all of Germany. It is so large that it
borders almost everything. 
Seriously, the bordering counties and the
country of the Netherlands tell us a lot about the diversity of the Emsland.
In Lingen they used to preach in Dutch at the reformed church. It also forms
the state border to Nordrhein-Westfalen, then there are the counties of
Cloppenburg (very RC), Leer, Osnabrück and Grafschaft Bentheim. A large part
of today's Emsland is the former Amt Meppen which used to belong to the
prince-bishopric of Münster and where the RC thing comes from. That
connection ended in 1803 along with Vechta and Cloppenburg.
Lingen itself was part of the territory of the counts of Tecklenburg and was
bought by Prussian in 1702. Before that it was part of the William of
Orange's land. It had been part of the Spanish crown lands. So the history
because of the proximity to Holland is quite mixed up.
Fred