 How are you guys today? Guess who I have with me? I have Flo from the Germany Project and I'm so happy that you're here Flo. Thanks for joining us. Hi. Now I will tell you guys a little bit of background too. Flo happens to do a lot of favors for me on the fly. I will ask him a favor and expect an answer in an instant and he almost always replies quickly with that favor. So I was thrilled when I asked him to join Bingo today with WikiTree and what we're going to do is we're going to talk one specific portion of the Germany Project. We're going to talk about researching with the Germany Project. Now I know a lot of you have German ancestors and a lot of you are Americans that have German ancestors and trying to research back with the different names of the locations is tricky. So Flo's going to help us out a little bit with that. I can tell you that he's helped me with I believe it was my fifth great-grandfather. He's helped me and he's still kind of digging in and working through it and that happens to be a Prussian brick wall of mine. And speaking of brick walls, so I gave Flo a couple profiles this week and asked him and his members of the Germany Project to dig in and see if we can break down two of those brick walls. And I think you did, right Flo? At least with one we got quite impressive progress with the other one, we at least found some hints which might be worth digging a bit deeper, yeah. So it's pretty interesting too because we're going to show you both of these brick walls one before the first cardabingo and then one before the second cardabingo. And I think that you'll see how they researched and how they found the information that they needed to break down these brick walls. I'm not going to tell the person that the Wiki Tree member that submitted these who they are until we actually show them. So it'll be a surprise for the Wiki Tree member if that makes sense. But before we go any further, we do like to give a general overview of the project. So let me go ahead and show you a little bit about the Germany page. This is the project page, the main project page of the Germany Project on Wiki Tree. And what I love are the tabs that you guys have here because you have a lot of information. If I don't know where to start with Germany, I might end up going straight to the resources. But then my other thing that I have is the location field guidelines. And Flo's going to give us a mini history lesson of this. Germany has so many different location names throughout the century. So he's going to give us a little bit of information about that in a history lesson, which I'm excited about Flo. And the name field guidelines in the modern states. Again, we're going to go through that in just a minute. But if you're interested in the Germany project and actually helping out the Germany project, researching your ancestors with the Germany project, it's the same as always for almost any project on Wiki Tree, come down to their main page in this little box here, we'll show you how to join. Now you have a couple of different teams on the Germany project broken out, right Flo? That's right, that's right. Not as many as there used to be, but still a couple. And I think that helps to narrow down where you might want to start with if you join the Germany project. Do I have to know German and speak German to join the Germany project? Of course, we love to have German speaking project members which can also help with research and can read the script and so on. But a little bit of genealogy experience is always or often sufficient, sure. So yeah, give me the join. And here's the information on how to join. It's pretty similar to what all the projects have out there to join Wiki Tree. So if you're interested in researching your German ancestors with the Germany project and want to be part of the team, then go to their main page and look on how to join. As usual, you'll receive a badge and you do a check-in, I believe too. Every, every, and you really do want to have people join to help not only improve these profiles but to help the active members as well. So if I was in America, then maybe what I could help the Germany project was, is really build out some of the American side of the profile and then make it easier for you and the German side to take it from there. For example, yeah. There's always, you have to, you can do so much in the country of immigration in terms of research, in terms of documents. There are so many possibilities where there might actually be a clue on the place name the person comes from because that's, in 90% of the cases, it won't work without having a place name. And that's the difficult part, I think. So I am thrilled. I'm going to turn over my mouse duties and my screen duties to flow. And he's gonna give us a little bit of a history lesson on those name places and the locations. I know that throughout the centuries, Germany, and I'll use the name Germany because I know it's had different names throughout the centuries has changed dramatically as far as boundaries are concerned. So if you could show us your screen and give us a little idea about what Germany looks like today and then let's go backwards. Okay, then let's see. So we have the Germany project page and we have here the tab with the 16 modern states. And here you see the map of Germany with all the states and all 16 states in the setup of 1990. Well, the last major change happened when Eastern Germany was reunited again with Western Germany. But we also had a lot going on before that. So we have the location guidelines which are also here linked on the main page. And on the location field guidelines we explain how to fill the birth place and the death place. And there is also a pretty nice list of what happened to Germany over time. And basically there are some, depending on how you look at it, three or five periods of time. So you have the Holy Roman Empire which lasted for almost 1,000 years, or 900, I don't know what I mean. And that Holy Roman Empire was huge and had a lot of countries. If you want to know what I mean with a lot, then look at this map from 1648 where every color is a different country. So, I'm not even talking about this. So every color is a different country and every country had a different leader. And then let's bring this back. So every color here that's a different country is a different name location. So this is tricky, this is a little tricky. Yeah, plus it had partially different administrations, different documents. And yeah, it comes with different challenges and benefits, I would say. And so after the, in 1806, where are we? The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, one could say. And the states that belonged to the church because there were also a lot of areas ruled by Abbeys, by Abbot and those were handed over to non-church entities. And those countries remained separate for some time until they started joining some confederation of the Rhine, which was then a bigger combination of countries. And then it turned into the German confederation for some 50 years. And so that is one part and that fell apart and there were some minor, small other unions. And then there was the German Empire, which lasted from 1870 until 1945. So the big chunks are basically the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation and the German Empire. And the big chunks are basically the Holy Roman Empire, what then came since 1949, Germany. And in between you have some years where things are different, but I think it's for starters, it's sufficient to know those big parts, like Holy Roman Empire, German Confederation and German Empire. And unfortunately, the suggestions from Family Search do not really reflect this Holy Roman Empire. They barely suggest that all of our place names and German Confederation, they also don't know, so they consider the German Empire also valid from 1850, which is not true. And that makes it really difficult because if we're searching from here, from America, and I will give everybody an example. We had a member of the rock that was rocked about a month ago, Aaron, and she had German ancestors and when we were searching, we knew the timeline that you show here, but Family Search just was not really cooperating with where our brain was searching. And I will tell you again, that's a flow stepped in and helped us out with that timeline. So I think for Americans to understand, the timeline, it really is factual, but sometimes your sources are not going to align and say the same thing. And also for us Americans, we can only get so far with Family Search. We're not going to be able to dig too, too far back, with just an easy, simple Family Search. And I would say probably ancestry too. Would you agree with that flow? It strongly, strongly depends on the area where you're looking for. For example, in the Baden area where I'm very active, that whole arch, DOC's of Freiburg is completely indexed on Family Search, apart from with a few perishes missing. So there you can really get pretty far with Family Search alone. Of course, you don't have the scans. So those you can only see in, how do you call it, Family History Center? Yeah. But... And with that, you lack often statements that are not indexed, like the location, like occupation of the parents, special relationships, adoptions, whatever, which were actually written in the church book, but are not indexed. So it's always good to take a look at the original or to have someone take a look and transcribe and translate the original. Oh, that's a really, really good tip. I hope everybody heard that. So even though you have the source, go to the original document, if it's in there the original text, that is probably in German. And look at the exact areas, because then you can put that on your wiki tree profiles and be more exact, instead of just a general, this is Germany. That's frustrating, I think for me, as I go through sources anywhere, even in the States, if I can only put just the main top level location, that's frustrating to me because I wanna dig down deeper. And Flo just gave a really, really good tip for anybody researching, whether in Germany or wherever you go, always try and look at that original source and that original text. So if I know the timeline, if I know the time that I'm researching for my ancestor and I come to this page and I see that it's in one of these particular timelines, when I go to search, say family search, I don't wanna be as specific. I wanna be a little bit more general with my search. It depends. So if you know the parish you're looking for, it's a good idea to go through the catalog family search to navigate to the exact parish and to select the book you assume the information is not the film, the information is in, because like that, you can then be very broad with a wildcard search using the asterisk. And with that, you can then search white but in a pretty narrow area. That makes sense, that makes sense. So you're very similar to the Italy project. When we had them, they really wanted to stress to everybody that you need to go also into the catalogs. You need to go into some of the unindexed areas as well that a lot of it's there. It is definitely there, but it's gonna take work. You're gonna have to do it. So when you do a simple family search search and you don't come up with anything, that does not mean that they're not somewhere in the family search website or catalogs. Go to the catalogs and find that parish. If you know it, that's fabulous. And you're gonna have to spend some time digging into it. Okay, so now that we know the timeline. One thing about the catalog, what also helps about the catalog that you will then also see what is not there and what you don't find. So just because you don't find it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And if you basically recognize a family search that the parish isn't available at family search at all, it's no miracle that you don't find what you're looking for, but you still might have the right parish. If that makes sense. That does, that does. So if I don't know German, where, I just am not having any luck with family search. Is there a place outside a family search that I can search and maybe have the webpage translated? So translate, or do you mostly rely on family search? Of course, for the part of the area which I worked the most, I love family search. For everything else, I strongly recommend again, Vicky, which is a family, which is brought by the society for computer genealogy, Kompkin. And that's basically the small German brother of the family search Vicky. Okay, can you drop that link into the chat and we'll give it to everybody? Okay, so that gives us a couple. I don't know if I can. Ah, here I might be. I will just put it to you in the chat. I don't figure out at the moment how to... And I'll drop that in. This is the page that is on the screen now. This is the website for... You can also call it with Gen-Vicky-DE that might be more easy to remember. Easier to remember, yeah. And here you can basically enter place names like the village of Hinterzarten, for example, constructed example. And then here you will find, of course, it depends on where you end up and how much work was done there. Here you will find the political structure of the village, a bit of history. Then it will maybe tell about the church books that are there where to find them, the civil records, address books, cemeteries because they also run a big cemetery project like find a grave, but add free and open to the public. And they also list here printed family books, which is also a thing in Germany where people basically transcribe a whole parish and reconstruct the families and put it into a book. So there are a lot of those family books, which I think is not really a thing in America. Not as much. We have some from colonial times, but they are really kind of a thing of the past. There's not a lot of them that are super current. And here in Germany, there are a lot published. And if you're lucky, you will find those also listed here at Jenbeke. And yeah, then you know what to look for and where to find the book, to find what the book you want to find. And then would I go to family search with that information or would it? They have some, but usually it might be smarter to turn to some German genealogy form or maybe even the G to G. Mo Kutte. And ask if someone has it and might be able to do a lookup or something. But we will cover this a bit when we talk about the brick walls. So you want to head to the brick wall? I don't know if I answered your question sufficiently. So I go, if I end up in a new place that I never researched before, let's say Kiel in Northern Germany, I go to Jenbeke and then I see what is there. Okay. Because it's with our 16 more or less independent states and rulers and opinions, every state does everything different. So you really have to focus on the state you are in as the present German state and see what they do, what is there. There are states that have a lot of civil records online for free. There are states that have nothing and everything in between. Kathy, good question. The family books are, as accurate as much effort the person publishing it put into it. What they are for sure great for is finding out where to look at next. So if it suggests that you find your person and there's a marriage and there are parents of the person, then you can A, take it for granted or B, then you know exactly in which year to look at and have a lot less effort. So for that, they are good for sure. And in some places it's so tough to get your hands on the church books. You are lucky to have such a book. And- Now, does it matter which religion? When you talk about church books or like the Protestant versus Catholic or is- It depends. A lot of family books are, so a lot of villages simply have or had one religion more or less to the time they cover. And then there are books that cover only a parish and there are books that cover a place with, let's say both parishes, Catholic and Lutheran Protestant. Yep. It would want to be more prevalent? Would the Catholic have more records than the Lutheran or are they about equal as far as keeping records? It strongly depends on the area. It sounds like it's up to the parish, the area, whether or not- Yeah, higher level, higher level I would say. So like the diocese, if you call it like that in English, or the Protestant equivalent, I don't know how those are called. What is good for if you have a Protestant or Lutheran reformed, whatever, people to look for. There is Archion de E, which is operated by the Catholic German Lutheran Church. And those have a lot of Lutheran church books. So they have really the biggest collection online. They charge a bit in order to be able to run the thing, but it's pretty impressive. So they have more or less that the whole, as a pieces from the whole German area where you can find original church books. But of course, it's only the scans and you have to find the stuff. So it's gonna take some more. It's gonna take some more. This is in a pretty easy research. And that's why I'm glad that you're here. So we can understand this isn't something like, oh, let me go to Ancestry, let me go to Family Search, cut and paste the copy, paste the, you're gonna have to really dig into this. Add to Family Tree, yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, so let's go into the first brick wall. And everybody, please get your bingo cards ready because we're gonna discuss the first brick wall and then we're gonna go straight into the first bingo card. So the first brick wall we dealt with was Jacob H. Sava, which according to the profile came from the kingdom of Wittenberg in the German Confederation, which by the way, already is a good and correct location name. Good job. And the PM, I think the is Mark, correct? Yes. And that I was like, Sava, I never heard that name ever. And I'm from Baden-Wittenberg, so should have heard it at one point, yeah. Okay, and what I did then was I go to the name distribution card, NVK, I will put it in the... Oh, this is a fabulous website too. Can you also share that link with me? This, Flo shared this with me before and I had so much fun with this website. I'm telling you, get a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a snack and just start adding the names of your ancestors in here and you'll have so much fun. So we have basically two choices here. I think there's only also an English UI to make it easier for you. So we have here data from the World War I loss lists of Germany, which where the soldiers were very roughly born at 1890 and we have data from a 1996 telephone book CD here. That's where the data comes from. And I usually use the 1890 because in present day with all the migration and everything and globalization, it's pretty, it's not that interesting to see where the name, it is interesting, but it doesn't help with research where the names are distributed. Okay, so we enter SAVA 1890, we click add. Everything, nothing happens. Just as a comparison, I will add Straub, click add and you see here, if I zoom in a bit that in Baden-Württemberg, there are quite a lot of Straubs around and in other parts as well. Okay, but no SAVA. So what do we do with Mr. SAVA now? And we looked a bit, like I said, didn't say that. It's important to look at what you have already, what you have in the States. And we looked at the census and then we looked at the marriage record here and marriage record says, saw brain. So always kind of look at the documents and the texts. And then we were like, huh, okay, that's weird. Marry to Sarah and Lister, okay. And we checked with the baptism with the death record and it fit, it was the right guy, but okay. And when you look at the scan, like I said, always look at the documents here. It's easy for you because English or I guess it's English at least. And you see here, saw brain Jacob, okay. And then we were like, okay, saw brain that we might have heard already. Let's see if that we find on the map. No, that we also don't find. I would remove the Straubs for now. And then Alexandra, very nice and helpful research colleagues. You might even be in the chat, I don't know. Point it out, saw a bri, saw a bri, saw a bri. That almost sounds like saw a bri, what we have in Germany. Let's look at saw a bri and we look at saw a bri and suddenly we have some hits here. And what we did then, we moved around a bit and found this at Anchestree, we found, yeah, it's German now, I'm sorry for that. We found a will. Wow. Mentioning a Jacob saw a bri, saw a bri. I don't know, how do you pronounce it in English? Saw a bri? Saw a bri is probably how they pronounce it these days. And yeah, it was then registered a bit late because the guy was supposed to be born in 1800, 18. But on the other hand, he might also have been a child here and that age is maybe a little off. And then we did some plain Googling for saw a bri, which always is a good idea, especially in Google Books. I strongly recommend that. And then we came up with this one here, sorry for the delay. So we came up with this Google Books hit here, we'll make it a little larger. And we found a George saw a bri, which moved to Dayton, Ohio. And we were like, the other one was also from Ohio. Unfortunately, I just closed that profile. So our Mr. Sava was also from Ohio and that will is also from Ohio. And here he became a merchant under the name Saw a Bride, which is quite a transition from Saw a Bride to- It is, it is, but I hope everybody sees. Now Flo did this extremely quick compared to what it took in real life. So he had this, if you see, when sometimes we're researching back older ancestors and also from different countries than what you're familiar researching, you're gonna have to dig. You're gonna have to really find these brick walls. And the reason why they're brick walls in this case is that last name. Exactly. And plus it would not be such a cool hobby if it would be all easy, wouldn't it? Mm-hmm, that's true. That's true. So we have now the George Saw a Bride which came to Dayton. We have the George Saw a Bride which was in the will with mentioning a Jacob. Maybe that's also a generation in between, who knows? But Mark, I would recommend you dig a bit in Ohio, Saw a Bride, Saw a Bride, Saw a Bride. And maybe you will find some more which will reveal a place name. And that would make it so easier, right? If a place name? Exactly, because just one more thing and then we probably head to the single part. The other way, one way is to know the place name and to look at the place name. The other way is to search some database. And especially for Wiltenberg, there is a Germany Immigration Index which is an entry free, which is free. You don't need to have a subscription for that one. Oh, great. I will put the link in the... That's real handy. So definitely the last link I gave where he was searching for the names on the map, bookmark that, keep that with you at all times. You're gonna love that site. And then if you're researching your German ancestors, here's the page that he's at right now that is free. You don't need that monthly subscription. And both... Just need to have an account. Yes. Maybe we can also put the links in the description of the video or in the G2G post. Absolutely. Yeah, and here you would now be able to search a big collection of, what do they say here? 60,000 people that emigrated from Wiltenberg. And yeah, maybe you're lucky. But with Sauerbrei, we were unfortunately not... Actually, we just used Sauerbrei. I think we even used Sauerbrei. I think you did have a lot of luck with that. I think you helped mark out a lot on how to look at the different names, but also to me, and I always talk about the power of WikiTree, is the communication and collaboration amongst projects. And to me, the biggest success out of this is that particular profile is an area that you know well. So you knew instantly that last name, there's something off with it. As opposed to someone like myself or Mark, we wouldn't even suspect that. That wasn't even a thought probably in Mark's mind. I know it wasn't in mine. So I think that's success. That you at least helped us understand that name. And now Mark can go back and try and find more information. And glad you're here, Mark. I think Mark is one of the ones who took lunch specifically to be here. I gave a little teaser that someone's brick wall was going to be broken down. We're gonna play bingo right now. And we do have one more brick wall to talk about, but let's bring up the bingo first and let me... Oops, let me share my screen real quick with you guys. Everybody should have your bingo card up. And there we go. Okay, so the rules of bingo is so remains the same. You must get bingo all the way across, down or diagonal. You notice I changed up the free space. The free space, go ahead and click that now. That should be a little picture graphic. So click that now. The first person that wins bingo, please type it in chat and make sure that we see it. Five of you might win bingo at the same time, but whoever's the quickest to type it in the chat is the bingo winner and we'll discuss the prize in just a minute. We're gonna go through these a little quick because we're running just a little bit long because the research was important and we've got a lot more research tips on the other side. So bear with us. We're gonna go through this a little bit quicker than normal. I have no idea how to pronounce this except I know those are umlauts. Ü, F and ö, which are German umlauts and you might find them in church books and transcriptions. And if you find them, please use them in the name fields. If you don't have them on your keyboard, you can also copy them from Wikipedia, for example. That's what I do. I copy. Louis III. Yeah, one belief of one form of belief, the other is Catholic. Also comes in the flavors of protestants and reformed in German would be Evangelisch. Baptism records are very important and the big primary source in Germany and those you basically have everywhere. Maybe not online, but since yeah. Privacy is very important. You have, yeah, when you are the closer you get to the present, the fewer data you will get and you will get a lot less data about the 20th century than in America with census and everything. We would never release a 1950 census, believe me. Yeah, at least not in this century probably. Not online, like I said, a lot is not online. So just because it's not online doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Yeah, that's the German flag, black, white, yellow and I urge you, please don't use it as a background image for profiles, especially not for profiles before 1948, 1848 because it was not invented until then. I don't hear you anymore. I don't know if that's me. No, that's me. That's me. That was a great tip. Thank you for obeying it. Censors this, we have a few in the north, mainly in the north, yeah. German Empire, like I said, one of the periods starting from 1871 until 1945. Gengelogica is a big German genealogy conference. It's online, has a lot in German, but if you speak a bit of German, it might be worth looking into it. It's usually in spring. Zütterlin is one script type like Courant, but Zütterlin was only used in the early 20th century. Everything before is Courant, although a lot of people will claim that all is Zütterlin. That's wrong, it's just a small, some 30, 40 years where Zütterlin was used. Side notes, if you get one reason to get church books and also civil records as copies, is you often will find side notes on them, like for example, on civil records, where the person died, where the person got married and so on. And you might even get stuff that is under privacy, but if you get the baptism record, no one will ask if there are living people mentioned with the baptism record is old enough. And I just want to note that we had two bingos, but they say keep playing. And thank you, you guys for doing that. Never close down your bingo card, even if somebody says bingo, don't close down your bingo card until we confirm it. So keep playing. And with that, let me click to the next word. There we go. Arian certificate, that was something which ruined a bit the image of genealogy because the Nazis also used it to track down people and to prove that you were the right supreme race and so on. And those are often used as sources, but you often had priests supporting you a little bit with creating that document and always check the primary sources because either the priest was nice or the priest was in a hurry. And yeah, Arian, like I said, is that a Protestant church platform where you find all the church books. Particular is another platform where you also find some Catholic church books. Yeah, we got a bingo, we got a bingo. Okay, let me go ahead and bring this down. Kathy, can you tell your daughter, congratulations now for those of you that don't know. I know because Kathy has told me her daughter plays bingo next to Kathy. So Kathy plays bingo and her daughter sits next to her and plays bingo as well. So congratulations. And this also gives me a chance to mention you do not need to be a member of Wiki Tree to win a bingo prize. Anybody can win a bingo prize that joins. So Kathy, what your daughter's going to do is she's gonna come over and email Eowyn and let her know that she won the first bingo from the Germany project bingo. Eowyn will then send her information on how to go shopping. It's up to $30 prize. That's a Wiki Tree branded prize. And you know, I always guys show the mug. So this is the all black mug. There's a black and white mug too, but this is the all black mug. Someone also showed me this week that they got a long sleep t-shirt in a royal blue color that was really nice too. So there's lots of things that you can choose from. So congratulations to Kathy's daughter. That's awesome. Okay, let's go ahead then and talk about the second brick wall. Do you want to bring that up on your screen? And I will let everybody know while Flo's doing that. June 9th, this is not the next bingo, but the next bingo will be our six month anniversary for bingo. So that's when the time rolls over. So those of you who have already won, starting in June, it'll be a rolling date. You'll be able to start to win again. And I mentioned that because of Steven in the audience. Okay, so let's talk about the second brick wall that we have. And I will go ahead and say that this one you had better luck with, I think, right? And I will also go ahead and say, Mark, if you're still watching, you will love this because they were actually both- Spoiler. Yeah, they're both your profiles. And we have a lot to share with this. Bear with us, guys. We're going to discuss this brick wall, how to research it, how Flo and his team researched it. And then we're going to do the second bingo card. We're running just a little bit late, but you don't want to miss this because this is a great brick wall. Okay, Flo, take it from here. Okay, so we have Johan Leonhard Fenzel. And let's just see that the name distribution map again if we get some hits for that one. And we see, okay, are not that many, but here in the Nürnberg area are a few and up here in Thüringen, there are, yeah. So sounds like the name exists. Good thing. Okay, where was he born? Ah, in Haversdorf. Okay, then let's go to Wikipedia. And search for Haversdorf. I often use Wikipedia to search for places because they really have everything. And so I enter Haversdorf. And of course, the German Wikipedia has more on German places than the English one because all of those are developed independently. So now we search for Haversdorf and we don't find anything. What a pity. Okay, so let's use Meijer's Gazetteer. I don't know if you know about that one. Yeah, let's just like this, yeah. Meijer's Gazetteer, now I have a, is a website that helps like crazy with German names. I will post the link. And now we have our Haversdorf. It was, I guess. And we search for Haversdorf, no results found. Okay, so something is fishy with that place name. Maybe let's do some wildcard. Maybe we, maybe that the V is wrong and the V was a U or something or a W. So let's put an asterisk here and search like this. And we find Haversdorf. We find Haversdorf, Hainersdorf, Halversdorf. So you really, with inserting the asterisk, it will search for everything that remains of the word except the asterisk. And the asterisk can be one or multiple characters. So it's a good for ineligible, do you say it like that? So pieces you can't read. You just enter it like that and you enter what you have and you add an asterisk and then you will get some place name suggestions. In this case, unfortunately, the place name suggestions are a bit few, a bit many, I mean. So which place was it? I mean, we can now check every church book for that birth, but yeah, we also have electorate of Bavaria. Bavaria doesn't have that much on family search online and not that much indexed. So, yeah. So I'm finding that we tend to get the last names wrong over in the States and the names, the spellings or the variations wrong. And then I know that you're not a fan of researching in this particular area. Yeah, mainly because there is not that much online in index and I'm so spoiled with my barden area because I have everything at family search. And here are really a few dioceses which are not online at all, some promise that there will be and if you have then huge chunks of white on the map which you can't even access, it's pretty annoying. But... I know, so this is tricky. So how do we break down this brick wall? Exactly. So I asked around a bit and Christina won another very cool Vickie Trier from the Germany project did a search in some local society database in the Nürnberg area and found something about how was it about a guy emigrating a basket maker, Johann Leonhard Konrad Fenzel, a basket maker emigrating in 1841. And yeah, so the guy seems to be around. And then we discovered that source, that database was basically transcribing a newspaper. I'm sorry for the lousy preparation. So it was transcribing a newspaper message or a newspaper page which a nice source announced, where do we have it here? Like I said, Johann Leonhard Konrad Fenzel, Korbflechter Basketweaver from Kotzenaurach. And this is family search. This is family search because Mark later told me he also had that and because I somehow didn't manage to bring the Google books hit up directly. So it was more me improvising. But let's see. And this took you in a different type of search before you were searching still in the last name, but you were looking at different variations the last name. First, this one you kind of looked at the area and had another fellow member, project member look at the area and start digging into society notes. Exactly, exactly. So there are a lot of probably not as many as in America but there are family research clubs, at least one per state I would say or more. And those have great databases. Those are also willing to help a lot. But of course, if you research more in that area they are also very happy if you become a member of them. That makes sense. And keep in mind too that I would imagine they would be appreciative of any information you have on this side of the pond to share with them so they can keep their records of the date too. So it's a partnership. Exactly. Maybe you can convince some of them of how cool WikiTree is. Absolutely. So we have this guy. That's the number of WikiTree. We learn from each other and from projects and I'm in Atlanta, Flo is in Germany and we're teaching and showing all this information to you as a global audience and that really is the power of WikiTree. That's so cool. Yeah. And so we have this guy here, this basket weaver. We also have another one with the same name. Also Fenzel Martin, also from Kotzenaurache apparently. And I asked Mark and he's about his sources because I was curious what else did he have because there was not everything in the profile. And he had some old history book handwritten in, I think even in German, some pages of it from some library and there our Johann Leonhard really had a brother named Martin. So we have the right family. And that's how you can confirm it. That was, that was great. Exactly. Yeah, but then Christina looked up Arcyon because what I wasn't aware of, I also learned every day that the Nuremberg area was pretty much protestant or pretty monotonously protestant and therefore they are on Arcyon. So you don't need the Catholic church books. And she looked in Kotzenaurache and didn't find a thing. And we still don't know about Harbausdorf. Oh. So we figured we need more help. And we asked at this course. Yeah, yeah, I will put it. Of course. So like I said, there is Kompkin, the Society for Computer Genealogy and I have way too many screens open. And- I'm sorry of every wiki-trayer's life. Too many tabs, too many screens. So like I said, there is this course which is something between a forum and the mailing list a bit comparable to the GTG2G and full of German genealogists and with some 10 years of archive or more of messages. Like Rootswept before it was gone. That's what I was just thinking. I was gonna say that anybody who's familiar with Rootswept this is very similar to that. Yeah. So definitely bookmark this in your German research for your ancestors. And basically, even if you don't interact with the people there. So we have a lot of categories which would fill a topic by themselves. There is somewhere a link to an English FRQ page. Let's see, maybe I can bring that up that would maybe help. I'm sorry for taking so long but maybe some people get something out of it. So this is the FRQs in English which explains a bit about discourse and how it works. Maybe you want to look at it. I think it would be a good advice for somebody to look at, especially if you struggle trying to find information. But also what I mentioned too, like Flo said, there's also G2G. Personally, I would use the resources that Flo's given us and dig as much as you possibly can. And if you still get stuck, then come over to G2G, tag the Germany project and make sure you have all your research on the profile. That way they don't double back and duplicate your efforts but it also gets them in idea of where you've looked and where they need to look. Exactly. And just one more thing. If you don't interact there at all, just use the search and you will find people that use in the same search in the same places or have the same surname. So that's always a great source. Okay, now back to our Mr. Fensel. And I asked, so the guy is supposed to be from Haverstorf. And at Findergrave there is also Kotzenaubach that I didn't mention. So at Findergrave there is the same place name like we had in the newspaper. And now I asked, is there anything in Kotzenaubach which sounds if you transcribe it and do a whisper and whatever and have some people that don't speak the language that can be transformed to Haverstorf. And five minutes later, someone writes, I would come up with Gross Haverstorf. What about that one? Wow. Yeah, so we know Gross Haverstorf and then Christina was like, yeah, cool. Let's look at our here in the church books in Gross Haverstorf. There is no Johann Georg Fensel in Gross Haverstorf. Yeah, well, no. I thought we were on a breakthrough. Yeah, so much therefore. And then some days later, Christina was, hey, hey, hey, did you see someone wrote there? And I was like, hey, what? And then we looked here and Via Kaletsky says, yeah, you have to look at the gravestone of the sun because at the sun birthplace of our Johann Leonhard, it says he was born in Rappelsholfen. Interesting. So and again, for us in America, we're going back to something we're familiar with, the finder grave to look and see. And we know that the site isn't always accurate, but as Flo said at the beginning hour with the history books, it's a hint. It's a good way to go. And it must have come from somewhere. And maybe somewhere is wrong, but maybe somewhere contains more clues on where to look next and so on. And what we also learned from this, don't look at the person themselves, also look at the children. Look at the death records of the children. I saw death records of children stating the village the father came from. Nothing about the father stated, no document about the father stated the place, but the death record of the child said, the father was from this place. That was awesome. Yeah. And now we have the first child of the couple. We have the people getting married. We have the mother of Johan being dying. We have the father of Johan dying. We have two or three siblings of Johan dying. Yeah. So why don't we get an arch here on pass and continue digging? Well, that leads us to a really good idea of, it's not complete proof of standard, but it leads us to a very good idea. Oh, we lost, there we go Flo. I was gonna say we lost you. So I think that this was very interesting how the first one you researched in a different way and then the second one you reached out to others that know the area or had some ideas. And I feel like that's a lot of what we do already with wiki tree. So if you take what you do with wiki tree already and then just use those websites that Flo has given, you're used to it. You're used to how to search and how to ask for help, which is great. So we broke that brick wall then, right? We did. So there you go. It took a lot of different ways and avenues to do it, but that's pretty awesome. And I think that it also says, it's not easy. This isn't one of those easy, easy things. You're gonna sit with it for a while and it might take you a month but that's the only profile you work on for research. Then it might take you a month or so because you're also waiting for people to come back with answers. Let me bring up the second bingo card while we continue to talk. So I think that you have shown us something really familiar and something really new. A familiar way of researching where you reach out to others and then all the new different places that we can research for our ancestors that come from Germany. And I know that as I mentioned, Flo has been helping me with one of mine. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take that profile and I'll see if I can dig a little bit deeper into it with the tools you've given us and see how far I get. And then of course you know, I will be reaching out to you when I stumble. So Flo is really great for that. Okay, so you guys ready? And you guys should recognize the graphic, the little picture in the bingo card. That is one that you will see as Flo's avatar. So again, don't forget, if you've already won bingo, you're not eligible. Do not close down your bingo card till we confirm the bingo winner. Bingo is horizontal, diagonal, vertical and go ahead and click that middle spot where you see the little green icon. That is Flo's. Okay. Bremerhaven is a place a lot of people emigrated from and it contains a museum about emigration which is quite interesting to see, I think. Never was there. 41 states, there were when they founded the welcome mark, when they founded the German Confederation, I think. Yeah. There were 31 states, casualty lists. Like I said, those are the source, for example, for those name cards that computer genealogies, society also transcribed all of them. 16 states in Germany we have now, ah, this is stressful. Okay. A lot easier than the olden times when we had that map with all the different colors. A lot easier. Exactly. But let me ask you, since we're here, you mentioned it earlier. You said that you would never post a 1950 census, for example. So what are the most current records for Germany? What year? Death records, civil death records, you can have 30 years after the last person mentioned died or essentially the subject. Yeah, okay. So death records 30 years and marriage records 80 years and birth records 100 years. Okay. That civil records churches are a bit different. Genialogen tag occurs once per year where all the genealogies societies meet in one place and have presentations and stuff. State archives are important. We have 16 of them. And not to be confused, for example, city archives or the federal archive. So that's something in the middle and they have great stuff sometimes. DRGV is the organization that is head of the genealogical societies. Ginwiki, like I mentioned, cool page where you get a lot of information about places. Azad Lorraine is part of France but it was a part of Germany between 1870 and 1918. And that also you have to keep in mind that you might have to look in France for documents if your people were from there. That's a really good tip. So you might have to look in both locations because they might have been born in one country, never moved, still stayed in the same home but died in another country. Exactly, exactly. My name is Schmit, are the most common surnames in Germany. Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, your kiddos are winning big time. And this is great. Now I know a couple of you have your kids join the bingo with you on their own devices and I love that because we're sneaking some history and some learning in this bingo game for these kiddos. So Cathy, you know the drill, have your other daughter go and email Eowyn and let her know that she won the second bingo for the Germany project bingo game and congratulations. So the Nava family really made out on some mugs or some t-shirts or tote bags, whatever you would like to do to order. This has been really informative, Flo. I knew this would be a different bingo. We weren't just gonna talk about, hey, this is a Germany project and this is what you can do with the Germany project. I knew that we wanted to dig into how to research our ancestors. So for all the links that Flo has provided, I'm going to add them to the description and I'm also going to add them onto the G2G that announced this particular bingo. So everybody has them handy. They are a gold mine. I'm telling you, the one with the gray map where you can type in the surnames, I had so much fun with that. I even typed in my Scottish family. I mean, I typed in everybody. So definitely have fun with that. Flo, thank you. Thank you so much. You've helped with these two brick walls. You've helped me with my own brick wall and you've helped Aaron with the rock brick walls. You and your team, we all are you guys such a debt of gratitude. So thank you so much for teaching us and educating us on how to research our German ancestors. You're welcome. And thank you guys from Germany Project and Germany Stammtisch for supporting this research. It was not me alone. No, I'm glad you mentioned that. One really, really quick thing. And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to announce this yet, but I believe because you guys have been researching these two brick walls for this bingo that you as a Germany Project are thinking about offering some help in general when people get stuck, right? Yes. There's some planning stages. You're thinking about it. Exactly, but we're pretty confident that we will offer maybe something like this without bingo and without prices, but maybe with answering people's questions and supporting their research. But we'll see about the details. So what are you looking for on G2G? I imagine you guys will announce on G2G. Exactly, follow Germany on G2G and you won't miss it. There we go. Okay guys, thanks. Have a great weekend. Bye, don't forget. We'll have one more bingo game today and it is a big one as well. These are two powerhouse bingos today. The next one is DNA with our very own mags and we're gonna talk about DNA and wiki tree and how to use it to your advantage. So thanks everybody, have a great weekend. Bye.