Continuing with the discussion on examining the German church records, I have no depth of experience in doing this. Perhaps, among the readers here, there are some who can add to the discussion.
Typically, looking at a single record such as a baptismal record, one is very discouraged at the first glance. Steve Broyles reported that it was all "Greek" to him. But he made copies of the records which he carried and studied in his free moments. Gradually words began to emerge. Often, personal or given names are the easiest to recognize. Many of the names appear lots of times and one begins to recognize them as units or words, not as a jumble of letters. Names such Johann, Michael, Anna, and Elizabeth, soon become old friends. Last names are not so easy.
The spectrum of last names is large. Furthermore, names are not always spelled in the same way. Usually, one has to decipher these, letter by letter, hoping sometimes to find multiple occurrences of the names to give you additional insight. As always in reading handwriting, one goes looking for unknown letters in the context of known words. To add to the difficulties, more than one style of writing may be used, even in the record.
Names of individuals are the most common occurrence in a baptismal record. Place names are common as someone will be identified as of a location. This may be where the person lived at the time. Or, the locality identified their citizenship, not their residence. Women are often identified by a man in their life, such as the husband or father. Occupations are typically used to identify people.
Place names are often very frustrating. First, the name of the locality is usually spelled in a different way than it is today. Second, though the spelling seems clear enough, but there are umpty-ump similar names in the index to your gazetteer. Third, when one goes for the film of the church records in a given village, it is found that they have not been filmed.
What I have described so far are a set of frustrations. Let's balance this against the rewards. Some individuals have put together complete family histories from the records covering multiple generations of many branches. Certainly those individuals who work full time at the process have accomplished a lot. But there is no reason that any one single individual cannot have a measure of success.
Let me urge a response on the part of readers who have some experience at using the German church records. Others would be interested in what you have to say. That is a purpose of this list, to exchange information and experiences.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the [email protected] 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.