Hi, Ursula,
I am sorry but I have to disagree.
Just need to ask the right people who are of course able to read, transcribe
and translate i.e. old, historic German church book records and you will
find nearly everything you are looking for regarding your German ancestry.
Kind regards,
Vera (Nagel)
Bad Soden, Germany
....who does such things on a permanent basis for various people around the
world with Germany origin. ;-)))
Hi Vera,
I'm German and I am a German-English translator living in a small town in
Michigan where I have translated old German church records from three local
Evangelical Lutheran Churches. The current pastors of these churches were
tired of receiving requests for copies of old baptismal, marriage and death
certificates which they could not locate because of the old German script.
And yes, these old ledgers from the 1850s-1880s are very fragile and
pastors don't want strangers handling them because in one instance visitors
have removed pages and in one case even absconded the very first volume
from the 1850s leaving an irreparable void in that church's history.
This is the reason why pastors are reluctant to allow strangers browsing
through the ledgers.
While anyone - even a non-German speaking person - can make out a name and
date but the part that's of value to genealogists is the family history
that can be derived especially from marriage and death records and that's
where non-German speaking persons have trouble with.
Vera Nagel wrote: