In the last issue of Beyond Germanna, Jimmy Veal has a note on research into the Hold/Holt family in Germany. For a few years now, as the result of research by Johni Cerny and Gary Zimmerman, there have been published, in the Before Germanna booklets, the German origins of perhaps more than forty of the Germanna families. This information was gathered as an entrepreneurial endeavor. The results were published as copyrighted material which defrayed the expense of gathering the information. I have reported the German origins of a few Germanna families, but the information had been gathered by private individuals who welcomed the distribution of the data. In general I have refrained from reporting the German information which was gathered by Cerni and Zimmerman.
Mr. Veal wished to verify the information on the Hold family (which had been given by Cerni and Zimmerman), and especially to confirm that the family did disappear in the German records at a time consistent with their purported emigration to the New World. Others have wished to do the same type of thing and there are two general courses of action for one to follow. One is to obtain copies of the same microfilms that Cerni and Zimmerman used (they are available from the LDS family history centers) and to read them. This has scared off people because of the old German script. Steve Broyles has done this for his Broyles family and he reports that it can be done, even if one's initial capabilities for this seem to be zero. Others have confirmed his conclusions. Incidentally, when Steve did this, he found that some improvements could be made in the records and that the records could be extended.
A second approach is to hire a German researcher. Mr. Veal did this and found that the expense was reasonable. Of course, he knew the village where he wanted the search to be made so the researcher could get right to work in the correct village at the correct time. Again, the result was that some improvements could be made in the record. In particular, the spelling of two surnames was changed. What had been Brickmann and Hägelin was said by the German researcher to be Brückmann and Nägelin.
Also, Mr. Veal had the satisfaction of knowing that no records could be found after 1717 for his Second Colony ancestor which made him feel better that the correct family had been identified. The earliest ancestor was Jonas Hold, born 1601, who was Bürgermeister (mayor) of Stetten am Heuchelberg. A maternal line carries back to (Old) Bernhard Brückmann who died in 1661. The village of Stetten am Heuchelberg is very much in the center of other villages from whence Second Colony and later people came.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.