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LINKS
to the countries in which our direct ancestors were either
born, married, or died. |
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Successful
genealogical research often hinges on identifying the localities in which our
ancestors lived. Thus one must fully
realize that resources which enhance our knowledge of the places inhabited by
our ancestors are almost as important as their names. Once we know the vicinity, we are in a
better position to consult the records and histories in an effort to piece
together the lives of our fore-bearers.
As such, the primary purpose of these web pages is to provide you with
a clearer picture of places we’ve identified as the ancestral locations of
our direct ancestors. As you
explore this area of our website you will find that we address each place
with a separate and distinct page about each Country, State, and county, (or
its equivalent). Within each county
page we have attempted to address many of the specific places, or what we
refer to as the gen-sites identified during our research. These gen-sites may be as broad as a city
or town, or a specific as the location of a home-site. In addition, you will also find the surnames
of persons who lived within the specified ancestral locations, as well as
links to additional resources that will assist with your research of the
locality. |
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Denterming ancestral locations
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HOW TO FIND THE
ANCESTRAL LOCATION
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To find information about an ancestor, you need to
determine at least the country the ancestor lived in for an event such as
birth, christening, marriage, or death. These suggestions may help you
identify where your ancestor lived: 1.
Start from what you know. If you are confident about where one
ancestor lived, start with that ancestor and work back to the next
generation. U.S.
Censuses from 1850 on are a great place to start, as they contain
birthplaces for everyone in the household.
Federal Census documents from the 20th century also include
immigration years. In earlier
censuses, children's birthplaces and ages can give you an approximate
immigration year. Keep going back
through census years until you discover an ancestor born outside of the
United States. 2. Search
for birth details by checking cemeteries,
obituaries,
military
records, immigration
and naturalization documents and most importantly birth,
marriage
and death
records for mention of a hometown or county. Use census discoveries to find
immigration details in passenger lists. More recent lists may include a birthplace
and the address of a close relative back home. Earlier lists can point you to friends and
family from the same area who arrived on the same
ship. Survey previous research, and
see what others have listed. For
example at FamilySearch™ your computer will search the Ancestral
File, the International Genealogical Index, and other Web sites that may
contain information about your ancestors.
3.
Find a place where one or more members of the family lived, and look
in the records of that place for members of the family. You may find parents
living with a child, or you may find information about the parents in a
child's record. Also look beyond traditional records. Church
records can mention births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, hometowns and
more. And an address from a census can lead you to nearby churches in city
directories. Land
records can help you pinpoint churches close to rural relatives. If you
hit a “brick wall” research someone else.
Records of an ancestor's sibling, cousin or parent could lead you to
the hometown you're looking for. 4. If your ancestor immigrated to the United States and you are unsure of the country he or she came from, click Tracing Immigrant Ancestors. |
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Ancestral
locations in central europe |
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In order to
develop an understanding as to where our German, Austrian, and Swiss
ancestors came from we need a more the basic understanding of the various
places that existed in Central Europe during
the 17th to 20th centuries. With the prominent exceptions of Britain
and France the stability of the administrative regions of Europe have changed
many times during the past 400 years.
This is especially true with regard to the areas of modern day Germany
and Austria. For example,
your family history states that your German-speaking ancestor came to America
in 1910 from the village of Toblach in Austria. If you check the a
list of cities and towns in Austria
you won’t find Toblach. You may want to go further and check a
database named Inhabited
places of Austria but would still be unsuccessful. As a last resort you Google
Toblach, Austria and only find a place named Toblach in Italy.
Can this be the ancestral location you’re looking for? If you are aware that the boundaries of
Austria were re-established in 1918 as the result of World War One you
realize that further investigation is required if you are to verify that the Toblach in Italy is the village of your ancestor. Eventually you find that the Treaty
of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
was the document that dissolved the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and created the boundaries of the new Republic of Austria. One of the provisions in the treaty stated
that the southern half of the former Tyrolean
crownland, including predominantly German-speaking
South Tyrol would become a part of Italy.
Further checking shows that the Tolbach in
Italy is in the province of South Tyrol. As that
aforementioned example illustrates that little knowledge about how and when
the administrative divisions were changed greatly assist with finding and
ancestral location in Central Europe. As such an awarenessof
the following basic historical information about the Holy Roman, Austrian and
German Empires can lay down a solid foundation for your further research. From 962 to 1806 much of
Central Europe was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. At its peak the core of The Holy Roman Empire lay in Austria and
included territories of the Kingdom of Germany, Kingdom of Bohemia, Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom
of Burgundy. For much of its
history, the Empire consisted of hundreds of smaller sub-units, principalities,
duchies, counties, Free Imperial Cities and other domains The Austrian Empire
centered on what is today's Austria. This
administrative entity officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. At its height of power it spanned from
present-day Italy to present-day Poland and to the Balkans. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of 1867 to 1918 comprised modern-day
Austria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia,
Slovenia,
large parts of Serbia
and Romania
and smaller parts of Italy, Montenegro, Poland and Ukraine. During the 17th century the
area now known as Germany was divided
politically into many locally governed principalities, free cities, duchies,
and feudal kingdoms. By 1648
Germany, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire, was
fractured during the Thirty Years War into more than 300 separate
states. In 1701 the Kingdom of Prussia
was established. Prussia would become
the hub around which the many separate domains would merge to become
Germany. During this time Prussia
would be one of the primary member
states of the German Confederation of 1815-1866, and the North German Confederation of
1866-1871 which became the German
Empire of 1871-1918, and lastly the republic of Weimar
Germany of 1919-1933 .From the 1871 unification of Germany to 1918,
Prussia comprised almost two-thirds of the territory of the German
Empire. In addition to the specific resources listed below look
at those cited within this webpage at Our
Favorite Map & Atlas Pages, and Our
Favorite Gazetteers. Here you will
find additional resources that apply to the central European countries
mentioned earlier. |
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Resources
for finding Ancestral Locations in Central Europe |
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·
List
of states in the Holy Roman Empire
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Constituent
lands of the Austrian Empire ·
Lands
connected to the Kingdom of Hungary
within Austria-Hungary |
·
States
of the German Confederation; ·
States
of the North German Confederation; |
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MAPPING THE ANCESTRAL
LOCATION
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It is
said that approximately 80% of all information has a locational
element. When it comes to family history this rises to 100%. Ask yourself the question "what single fact
connects every single event in every single family tree everywhere in the
world?" Answer every event took place
somewhere. This can be cemetery data,
battle records, birth, marriage, work, census, parish, county, journey,
disembarkation, hospitalization, incarceration (mental hospital and prison),
disaster and criminal records. Any
record, in fact, that has a locational element. One can
hardly conduct thorough, meaningful research on any family line without incorporating
the use of maps in some significant way.
Find maps online is easy and there is an abundance of them to
use. Maps are such interesting and
exciting sources of information, and come in so many varieties that their
study and use could become an avocation in and of itself. This section of the web page will show you
some mapping sites we like to use for genealogical research. We believe that all are useful in one's
quest to discover early family origins. Below are some examples of Maps, Gazetteers, and Other Helpful Resources for Researching
Locations. These web sites comprise
only a small portion of what is available for researchers interested
in learning more about the areas in which their ancestors lived. If the list below doesn’t contain what you
are looking for, we suggest you try Odden’s
Bookmarks, which contains links to more than 10,000 cartographic sites. |
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OUR FAVORITE MAP
& ATLAS PAGES
(For
Locating Gen-Sites) |
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United Kingdom ·
Ordnance Survey, Britain's
mapping agency ·
Ordnance
Survey Open Data (UK) ·
ScotlandsPlaces - use the
mapping in the website to both define and refine your
search. World Locations · Bing Maps (N.A., World, Europe) (good for copies) ·
MSRMaps ·
MSN Maps
(N.A., World, Europe) ·
Maps
– Family Search
Research Help ·
Ancestry.com
- Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers $ ·
United
Nations—Cartographic Section ·
Panoramic Maps
Collection (Library of Congress) ·
Perry Castaneda Library Map
Collection ·
The American
Geographical Society Library ·
Library of Congress (Geography & Map Collection) Historical Maps
& Atlases (World Countries) ·
An Atlas of The German
Empire (1883) – Search the gazetteer, for a town or village to find reference to
a map section that can be used to narrow the search down to a single section
of the large complex map. ·
Topographic Maps of Germany
– pre
World War II ·
Central & Eastern European Map Library – mostly late 19th and early 20th century
maps. |
U.S.A. ·
National Atlas of the United States ·
Historic Topographic Map Collection
- USGS ·
Wikimedia Atlas of the United
States ·
Free Topographic Maps – USA, States
& Counties ·
U.S. Digital Map Project - USGenweb U.S.A.
Historical Maps & Atlases ·
U.S.,
County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918 $ ·
Morse's 1845 North
American Atlas ·
U.S.
History Maps (Wikimedia) North America · Bing Maps (N.A., World, Europe) (good for copies) ·
Acme
Mapper 2.0 (good for coordinates) ·
Mapquest –
US & Canada Locations ·
TopoQuest - Topographic Maps
Online ·
Anyplace America. Free Topographic
Maps! ·
National Atlas of Canada – About 350,000 Canadian place names, including
English, French, and Indian variants. Central European Countries |
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OUR FAVORITE GAZETTEERS
(For
Locating Gen-Sites) A gazetteer is a
geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for
information about places and place names (see: toponymy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas.[1]
It typically contains information concerning the geographical
makeup of a country,
region, or continent
as well as the social statistics and physical features, such
as mountains,
waterways,
or roads. Family
historians encounter many place names that were once important to the family
being researched. Over the centuries,
names of provinces, counties, districts, towns, rivers, and even mountains
may have changed. As such knowing the
current spelling and location of a place
will be of great assistance to any genealogist. Numerous gazetteers about the United States
as well as other countries of the World are accessible online. Therefore we suggested that you make use
of the following website-links if you are looking for a village, fort,
church, creek, lake, mountain, or any other place you may come upon during
your family research. |
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Standard Finder can be of assistance to researchers in determining proper spellings of locations and, |
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checking if
locations exist as well as
determining alternate name spellings will expand your research opportunities. |
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Germany
For
more on this topic, see Germany in our “Internet
Resources” section. ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, & Regions in Germany ·
East and
West Prussia Gazetteer ·
Lists of German communities
by state & county ·
German & Polish place
names - Index
contains Polish and previous German names of localities situated in Poland
and Russia. Also some names of places
from former Saxony now in Poland and Silesian now in Germany. ·
German
Gazetteers - ProGenealogists ·
German
Empire Gazetteer - Names of 3365
places. Because many village names were “Germanized” in East-Prussia the new
name is after a slash. The Polish, Russian Cyrillic and Lithuanian
equivalents are shown in a separate column. ·
An Atlas of The German
Empire (1883) – Search the gazetteer, for a town or village to find reference to a map section that
can be used to narrow the search down to a single section of the large
complex map. ·
Kartenmeister – This database contains
92919 locations with
over 38,691 name changes once, and 5,500 twice and more. All locations are
east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and are based on the borders in 1918.
Included in this database are the following provinces: East Prussia,
including Memel, West Prussia, Brandenburg, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia. ·
Hannover Gemeinde Index - Covers Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, called "Hannover") Braunschweig (Brunswick), Schamburg-Lippe
and Oldenburg. ·
Meyers
Gazetteer of the German Empire $ - The gazetteer to use to locate place names in
German research. It was originally compiled in 1912 (pre World War One).
Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets,
villages, etc. United Kingdom
For
more on this topic, see United Kingdom in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
List of places in the United Kingdom -
Wikipedia · Directory of Cities and Towns in United Kingdom ·
Old Maps,com.UK
Gazetteer - Selecting a place from
counties as they were back in the mid 19th century will show the historical
map for that area. ·
Gazetteer
of British Place Names – 50,000 entries that includes the historic county as well as modern
administrative districts to determine what county each place was originally
in, and where records might be found today. ·
A Topographical
Dictionary of England - Contains
detailed topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England. ·
GENUKI Church Gazetteer –
This
database contains the approximate location of the parishes that existed
around 1837. ·
GENUKI 1891 Census
Gazetteer ·
This
database contains the names of places
encountered in the 1891 census for England, Wales and the Isle of Man. ·
Registration Districts: England
& Wales (1837–1974) These
pages show composition of the civil registration districts. There is also an Alphabetical List of Districts
and an Index of Place Names for the
whole of England and Wales. · List of places in Northern Ireland ·
A Topographical
Dictionary of Scotland - Contains detailed
topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England. ·
ScotlandsPlaces - enter a place
name or a coordinate to search across different national databases. Ireland
·
The Ireland Atlas / Database ·
A Topographical Dictionary of
Ireland ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, and
Regions in Ireland |
United States
For
more on this topic, see United States in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
U.S.
& Territories (USGS-GNIS Place Name
Search) This site allows you to search
among over 2 million place names. ·
List
of cities, towns, villages in the U.S. - Wikipedia ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, in
United States ·
U.S. Gazetteer (Census Bureau) ·
US Cities & State Gazetteers (US
Home Town Locator) ·
Geographic
Reference Library –
Ancestry.com World
For
more on this topic, see World in our “Internet
Resources” section. ·
Gazetteer
of Historical European Places - This gazetteer will assist with accessing additional information about
the places cited within Rietstap’s Armorial
General. ·
Standard
Finder is a FamilySearch
Labs application which provides access to standardized information for names,
locations, and dates. · JRC Fuzzy Gazetteer - Search over 7,000,000 place names using a phonetic transcription of the place. The search is spelling tolerant, with more emphasis on the vowels. This site can be helpful when tracing obsolete or misspelled places. ·
Directory of Cities and
Towns in World ·
Foreign Place Names
Search (USGS-GNIS) ·
Getty
Thesaurus of Geographic Names ·
A Dictionary, Geographical,
Statistical, & Historical 1.
Volume 1: AA - Caspe 2.
Volume 2: Caspian Sea - Iona 3.
Volume 3: Ionian Islands - Poole 4.
Volume 4: Poonah
– Zytomiers ·
JewishGen Gazetteer - is a database containing the names of all localities in the 54
countries of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. ·
General
Reference Library - Geography France
For
more on this topic, see France in our “Internet
Resources” section. · Administrative divisions of France ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, and Regions in France
·
Dictionnaire des Postes aux Lettres – A gazetteer, published in 1754, of
post offices in France and Belgium. Canada
·
Geographical Names of Canada ·
Gazetteers of Canada
(English-language) ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, and
Regions in Canada Netherlands
·
Directory Netherlands Cities,
Towns, & Regions Austria
·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, and Regions in Austria ·
Austro-Hungarian
Empire Gazetteer Switzerland
For
more on this topic, see Switzerland in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, &
Regions in Switzerland ·
List of
places in Switzerland ·
Municipalties
of Canton Berne |
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Researching Countries
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If you are attempting to perform research
on ancestors from countries other that the United States or Europe you should
consider starting at this website that is sponsored by Family Search. This Wiki offers Free family history
research advice for genealogy research by family historians, like yourself. Here you
can learn from over 37,440 articles about how to research in every corner of
the world. From the list below, click on a country of
your choice. Within the countries,
information is arranged by topic. You
can learn about important record types, research methods, and repositories,
And this free online source is up to date with most current websites and new
of record availability. |
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Internet resources
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This search engine may provide you with additional |
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information to assist with your research about this topic. |
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General
Resources
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·
Cyndi’s
List – Maps and Geography
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Geographic
Aids – Family Search
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Ancestry.com
Library—Geography Section $ ·
Google Earth – Info. about
Blogs, Newsletter, Tutorials |
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FRANCE
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GERMANY
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·
German Genealogy Info. & Resources |
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Genealogy.com:
Places/Geographic, Europe |
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SWITZERLAND
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·
Switzerland
Genealogy links - Swiss geneology |
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UNITED KINGDOM
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·
United Kingdom and Ireland - rootsweb.com ·
GENUKI:
UK & Ireland Genealogy ·
UK
Genealogy - The Portal for UK Family Research |
·
Cyndi's List - United Kingdom
& Ireland Index ·
IGI
Batch Numbers-British Isles & North America |
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UNITED STATES
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·
Linkpendium
> Genealogy > USA ·
The American History and Genealogy
Project |
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world
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·
Africa – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Antarctica
Gazetteers - Wikipedia ·
Asia – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Asia Gazetteers - Wikipedia ·
Australasia – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Australia Gazetteers
- Wikipedia |
·
Europe – National Mapping Organisation Network
·
North America – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
South America – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Worldwide Gazetteers
- Wikipedia |
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Free Records
& Databases
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All of the records and databases we’ve collected
are FREE and can be accessed and searched online without
having to pay for a subscription. We
have divided our collected into 14 record types specific to the United
States. The Land Records, Gazetteers & Maps records should be useful in locating locations within the United
States. We try not to list any sites that have only a few records for the
purpose of getting you to a website that will charge a fee to actually see
the record beyond just a name. |
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This Link will take
you to our |
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collections of FREE Records. |
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Genealogy
Reference Library
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The
following Link
will take you to our library of genealogy reference books. Here you will find atlases and gazetteers that will be
of great assistance in learning more about a wide variety of locations
through out the world |
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This Link will take you to our |
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collections of
reference books. |
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Image galleries
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During our research we have collected images and
photographs that are of general interest to a variety of localities. Some of them are presented on this website
because we believe they tend to provide the reader with additional
information which may aid in the understanding of our ancestors past lives. |
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Use the following LINK
to ascertain whether |
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we have any images that may interest you. |
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Use the power of Google™ to find more interesting images about this
topic. A Click on this button will link you to the Google Images Search
page. |
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Enter
the topic you are searching in the box and click “Search Images”. At the “Images”
display page you will see the image, as well as the website of which it
is associated. |
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About this webpage
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CONTACT INFORMATION
We do
like to hear from others who are researching the same people and surnames. We
need your help to keep growing! So
please Email
photos, stories, and other
appropriate information about this topic. RULES OF USE We only ask that if you have a personal website
please create a link to our Home Page. -- This webpage was
last updated on -- 01
April 2013 |
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