"L Wessels" <lwessels@yahoo.com> schrieb:
I need help. How do I go about finding the town of this family?
ship manifest information.
embark: Bremen, Germany
debark: New York
ship's name: Jenny
Arrival Date: 16 Apr 1869
Dirck Dietr Gerdes 50 farmer Prussia Ill
Gretje 53
Gebke 25
Ventje 22
Talke 17
Dirk 0/11m
I have a lot of information about Gebke and baby Dirk, but no information about what town they were born. I have one 1870 USA census that lists the parents as from Hanover, but no children are listed. Obituary information only lists Germany as their birthplace.Laraine Wilson Wessels
Peoria, Illinois
lwessels@yahoo.com
Hello L. Wessels,
that's a very complicated research because of the commonness of the name. I can only give you some statistical hints. There are about 4350 bearers of the name GERDES, about 60 % live in Lower-Saxony, 20% in North-Rhine-Westfalia. They are centered in the West of Lower-Saxony and the North-West of North-Rhine Westfalia. The very centre of GERDES families lies in and around Bremen up to the coast including the islands in the North-Sea. In this northern corner the GERDES-populations goes up to 800 Gerdes on 1 Million inhabitants.
In this case without a specific hint in your documents for a place of heritage it is an estimated chance of one to thousand to hit the right place by researching on one of the actual living German GERDES places. As all the women names "Gretje, Ventje, Talke" sound to German ears also a bit Dutch one may slightly think of a place nearby this border or at least the border region. Ostfriesland is also a good possibility.
Greetings and nevertheless good luck Hans Peter Albers, Bienenbüttel