My g-grandparent, John Henry Seaman, was born February 03, 1858 in Warnon,
Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Germany. (I can find no reference to a Warnon so
maybe the spelling is incorrect.) This information came from a family member
who is no longer living.
He came to the US around 1869 when he was 11 years old. I would like to
start looking for several pieces of information, but am lost as to where to
start looking.
(1) Birth Records - Is Warnon the town, parish, or something else. I found
maps showing Mecklenburg and Schwerin. Where would I go to find birth
records?
(2) I see there was a census taken in 1867, so my changes of the family still
being in Germany then should be pretty good. How do I narrow down which
microfilm the information would be on?
(3) How do I start searching for passenger records of their voyage to the US?
Any help anyone can give me in any of these areas would be greatly
appreciated.
Pretoria Maxwell
Michigan USA
Tory,
I have a suggestion for your 3rd question, but first let me ask where in Michigan do you live? if you live in the Metro Detroit area, you might want to go to the Burton Historical Collection which is in the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. They have the complete set of the series called, "Germans to America" (in book form). If you can find your family there, you might also be able to find them on a microfilm copy of the ship's manifest at Burton, depending on the port in the US they arrived in as well as the port in Germany that they emigrated from. Burton has the microfilms for the Hamburg Passenger lists as well as the New York passenger lists. I'm not sure if they have any microfilms for immigration to other US ports.
Hello, Pretoria Maxwell,
Warnon is certainly Warnow, see our location database at
www.MFPeV.de. There are 2 Warnow's in Mecklenburg, but
only one contains in the 1819 census the name Seemann,
what is the original German of Seaman. This Warnow belongs
to the parish Zernin. Therefore it seems worth to start to
search there
The church records are microfilmed an can be read at any
Family History Center of the Mormons.
Sincerely,
Hans-Dietrich Gronau
Gronau@MFPeV.de
President of the Verein für mecklenburgische Familien- und
Personengeschichte e.V. - http://www.MFPeV.de