High Hopes: I arrived in Germany yesterday to trace the family roots for my paternal grandmother's family. I've been working on geneaology for years, but only recently has enough German church records been digitized and put online that I think I might have a clue where to look. Last year, I found evidence of my great-grandmother's Pauline Christine Hagner's birth in Neckargartach, Wurttemburg; at least the birthdate was correct. Could there possibly be two people with the same name born on the same day in Germany in 1870? That was my worry; but I added the information to my family tree on ancestry.com anyway. Lo and behold, a few months later, I was contacted by a fellow researcher named Evelyne. She also has Pauline on her family tree and goes several generations beyond that. It seemed worth it to come over and try to confirm the relationship and to meet with Evelyne. After all, the strategy worked in Ireland, why not Germany?
Low Expectations: Of course I had planned to do a lot of preparation before my trip, including more research, studying German, etc., but the real world (job, family, other activities) intervened. This makes the chances that I will actually learn anything useful much less likely. My mother remembers that my grandmother talked about her Mom's family coming from around Frankfurt. That's not where I am looking. So far, I have found the general German populace very unfriendly; hopefully the same won't be true of the archivists and librarians, and hopefully they will speak English.
First stop tomorrow, the archives in Stuttgart, then up to Heilbronn to look for the Evangelische church records! More later.
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