I have been doing Genealogy for years, since I was about 14, I became very interested in our families history, when my Grandma got involved heavily into it. At 15, I went on a very long road trip with my Grandma, and it involved digging in cemeteries. It was a lot of fun, looking for people, searching thru weeds, snacks, bugs and swamps... yes swamps.. some people were buried in cemeteries that were turned into natural wildlife/flora preserves and then flooded. I basically took it is, the town, city, county or state, didnt feel the need to upkeep it, or didnt have the money to do so, so they just let nature take its course.
Finding Relatives the old school way, involved traveling and lots of microfilm, making photo copies with large bulky copiers and doing a lot of writing. Now in the days of the internet, fax machines, email it is much easier to get the info. Sometimes I still do it the old school way, getting the actual copies of the things i need, from a death certificate to a marriage licence or land deed.
If you are new to this you are not alone, I still consider myself an intermediate Genealogist, but I am very resourceful since I have a background with detective work. I love to help people get in the direction they want to get going, but for me, what is hard, is asking for help. I am still looking for my maternl grandfathers family, the trail stops actually when they leave Germany and enter the USA in the late 1800's. Rumor has it, they changed the spelling of their name, and there is a town in Germany named after them, and I'd like to know why. Someday I know that I will find out why. But for now, I have been working on getting all the research that I have collected from my Grandmother into proper order.
My title "I Seek Dead People" is as plain as it can get. I have dug in dozens of cemeteries, taking photos, rubbings and etchings, putting the last place photo with the person, and then go in reverse. It seems to work best for me this way, and when others need help, they know exactly what I do.
http://www.findagrave.com
ReplyDeleteHello Tracy,
ReplyDeleteI found your blog through a forum entry on the ancestry board, when I was tracing back my own connections with the name Hammerstaedt and its various spellings. The other member participating in the discussion is actually a cousin of mine and I wrote her via the facebook profile of my brother, but she has not responded yet.
My great great grandmother was a Catharina Hammerstaedt and lived in Borken/Hessen Germany where I still live (and the others she mentioned were born). I researched all church books of Borken in the portal "Archion"and made a Hammerstaedt tree. They came here in about 1740. It's apparently not your line but maybe they are somehow connected. Today there are not many Hammerstaedts left in Germany.
Admittedly your blog post is several years old and I don't know what you've found out in the meantime or if you even read this but in those church books you find all different kinds of spelling: there is Hammerstatt, Hammerstadt, Hamelstat, Hammerstädt, Hammerstätt and even Hamenstädt. It was written down as it was heard and maybe sometimes the priest had a glass of wine too many...
The town was however not named after them - rather the other way round. People were sometimes named after their origins, for a long time including a preposition like "Wilhelm from..." - before the preposition was dropped.
My gggrandmother was the last Hammerstaedt in Borken (+1893) but even then the spelling was sometimes different throughout the entries.
I don't know what's on ancestry but if you're still researching before immigration I could have a look.
You can also have my makeshift tree of the name if you like. Maybe there's another piece of the puzzle.
All the best
Björn