Hi Lee, please read my answers to your questions.
1.The town my great grandfather (Ernst Heinrich B�scher) came from is
spelled different ways. The researcher from Buer, Germany spelled it
Hustette on her letter. The original church record has it Hustatte with an
umlaut over the "a". There are 2 villages in the Kreis Wittlage area with
similar spellings, H�sede and a bit
south is Hustaede. Someone from this list thought it was Hustaede. Does
anyone else have ideas so I can be certain.
SVEN`S ANSWER:
When you are not sure how a english word is written 'correct', what do you
do? You take your dictionary and look it up and find the way the word is
written now in these days. A language and of course the written language is
changing through the centuries. We say for example that there are living
languages and death languages f.e. the Latin. Children learn Oxford
Englisch, here in Germany they learn Hochdeutsch (highgerman) - there are
various kinds of accents. Think of Bavaria and Berlin: Ik bin ein Berliner
(you should know who had said this). Even in these days the older people in
rural areas like Melle can speak low german. Husta"dte belongs and belonged
to Buer and Hu"sede has never belonged to Buer. Hu"sede is on the other site
of the Wiehengebirge (mountain). The spelling of the area Hustette has
changed like the language, words from low german changed to high german:
Hustette, Husta"tte and now Husta"dte. Eine Sta"tte = a place, a farm was
called a Sta"tte or in old times Stette. Now the area is written with the
ending (Hu)sta"dte: eine Stadt = one city ; zwei Sta"dte = two cities.
2. The page the church secretary in Buer sent me was different from any
German records I have ever seen. It listed father and mother including
maiden name and then a list of ALL the children in birth order. It was more
like a family list instead of an individual birth record. Is this common?
SVEN`S ANSWER:
Friday the 31 August I spend the whole day with the US couple Selmier who
visited Germany. I organized a dive through the old church records of Buer.
Frau Buth, the nice older lady who does the research, was wonderfull and I
think that I know what kind of document you are talking about. In 1855 they
made a family book, a book that lists all families of the parish buer with
the status of 1855. It is divided in the areas of Buer like Husta"dte and
lists families: Father & Mothers maiden name and then the children in order
of there birthday. So this is not the birth or more correctly the baptzism
document.
Sven Honerkamp
Melle - Lower Saxony - Europe