German efficiency goes a long way back, at least in the Kingdom of Wuerttemburg. For part of the 17th, the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, church parishes were required to record everything that happened in the life of a family in the 'family book'. Intended to make it easier to track young males that might need to be conscripted into the army, these family books are a great boon for geneaologists. The family book lists the head of household and their spouse, complete with birth dates, marriage dates, death dates if applicable, occupation, names of parents, and names, birthdays, confirmation dates, death dates, etc. for all children. As you scan through them you can see who left for America, who moved, etc (once you decipher the old German script!). I found microfilm copies of the family books as well as baptism, marriage and death records for Wuerttemberg at the Staatsarchive in Stuttgart.
Reading the family books are very moving because you can see how hard life was back then. Our great-great-great grandfather, born in 1795 and a farmer (burger), was married twice. With his first wife they had five children and two died in infancy. When he remarried, they had nine children and only three survived to adulthood.
Assuming I have found the correct Pauline C. Hagner - and since I have her birth date, it is pretty firm, her father (also a farmer) died when she was ten. A couple of years later, the mother (a Schmid from Heilbronn) moved with her son and four daughters back to their home town, and the family book was no longer updated in the original parish of Neckargartach. Unfortunately, the government took over vital records after 1880, so the family books will not help show her journey from Heilbronn to Connecticut. The next step will require digging into the bureaucratic records.
No comments:
Post a Comment