A couple of little words of warning as you proceed through your German Script lessons. It is not unusual for a German who is writing in the Eighteenth Century to write up the very end of the line as the paper permits and then resume an unfinished word at the beginning of the next line. Some writers give you a hint that they are doing this by the way of a little added mark. But if the letters do not make sense, try adding a few letters from the next line and see if that helps.
Dates are sometimes confusing. In the old Julian Calendar, the new year started in March (the 25th I believe it was). Therefore, September became the seventh month, October the eighth month, November the ninth month and December the tenth month. The start of the month names are a clue to this (Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec.). Sometimes these months are referred to numerically (by either arabic or roman numerals) in accordance with these assignments. This held true even after the new calendar was introduced. And remember that the day is given first. (That is the rational way of writing the date.)
The letter " F " is for Friedrich, give or take a few letters. Now " F " looks a bit like a " T " but the difference is whether the upright on the letter is crossed. (This is also the case with the lower case " f " which looks like an " h ".)
The " G " is one of the torture letters. I first studied my German Script with the Moravians and they had a standard way which actually made sense to someone who could write an English Script G . Someone failed to tell the other Germans that it would make life easier for future generations if they always wrote it this way. But, no, they decided to embellish it with lots of flourishes. To them, the letter is not complete until it has at least twenty-four turns in the writing and it crosses itself about seven times. You will want to keep of a list of hard-to-classify letters and put the " G " right at the top right alongside the " A ".
The capital " H " is not so bad because you will encounter it in every Baptismal Record in Hans, or Hanns, or Hannss (take you own pick with as many "n's" and "s's" as you think fit). The point is that almost every boy is named Hans, so the first name you will learn to recognize is Hans and therefore you will have a good idea of what the " H " looks like.
One of the things that you learn to do is to recognize names by their overall pattern. This is necessary because the individual letters are often hard to recognize. A name, in Gemmingen, that starts with something a bit like a capital "
K
", has a little bump after that, then two letters that rise a bit higher, and then concludes with two squiggles on the base line is Keller. What you hope for is to find the name written clearly enough at some point that you can make out the detailed spelling. The Kellers were very prominent in the church at Gemmingen, and left their footprints all over the church book.
(09 Sep 03)
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.