Since returning from Europe, I have been working on indexing and transcribing the 250 pages that were purchased. Thanks to you who helped with the copying expenses. That turned out to be much more than I expected, but I think that once the records have been transcribed, the knowledge gained will make it all worth while.
I thought I'd take a few minutes to assure you that these records are being processed, even though I haven't posted much to substantiate that claim, and to give you an idea of how I am processing the information.
I want to reiterate that I have never had any formal training in either the German language, nor in the old Gothic script that is used almost exclusively in these records, but I keep learning as I go along.
And I have found that the record keepers also throw in a little Latin now and then, just to make things interesting.
I have started keeping a vocabulary list gleaned from these church records and categorizing them based on their usage. I have ecclesiastical terms (usually in or based on Latin), place names, occupations, relationship terms, etc.
I also have a surname list which includes all the names of all the people found in the records which were purchased (which I have been able to read or make a good guess at). The purpose for this is two-fold. First, it gives me a database to pull from when a new surname is discovered. For instance, I have learned that Johann Heinrich Rödiger's mother's maiden name is Bettenhausen. Now, I can look through my index of surnames and find other Bettenhausens and see if there are other relationships that can be connected to our family.
Second, many of the names are difficult to read and certain letters (at least to me) look almost identical. Capital B and L are similar, lower case n and e and u are similar, f and h, and d and final s are a few examples. So, to use Bettenhausen as an example, the first time I ran across it, I had to determine if it was Bettenhausen, Buttonhausen, Buttonfausen Letten..., Lutten... etc. By looking at a number of families with that name it becomes easier to determine which is correct. And occasionally a scribe will actually write it very legibly or use Roman style script (which is like that which we learn here in the States).
I have also started keeping a spreadsheet for each of the four types of records which the church kept: birth/baptism, confirmation, marriage and death. I am beginning with the records of people I know to be related (and how they are related). I start by transcribing the Gothic script into typewritten German and then translate it into English. This process leads me to find other relatives that I did not know about: brothers, sisters, spouses. Even the baptismal sponsors/witnesses/godparents provide clues. They will sometimes tell us that the child's mother's sister was one of the "Taufpathen" and name her, for instance, as "Catharina, wife of the miller, Heinrich Böttner." This opens up a whole new avenue of exploration at some point.
After I have entered the information about people I "know" I will go back and pick up on the clues that I have found and look at the people who have surnames that are the same as those whom I have already identified. There are times when the relationships found just beg to be explored further, and I can't resist the temptation. I think you can see this process going on in my last two posts.
While, initially it appears that I may have found only about 100 records of any import to our family history, the reality is that in the final analysis many more will come to light.
Realize, that many of the records are spread across two pages, so perhaps in reality there are only 150 pages of records. However, on each of those pages there are 4 to 10 individual records. I haven't added them up yet, but I would estimate that there are 800 to 1000 individual birth/baptism, confirmation, marriage and death records obtained in this last treasure hunt. And because this is such a small, relatively stable community, the chances of inter-relationships existing between the individuals in the majority of these records is extremely high. On one particular page I found the marriage records of three of Friedrich Eichenauer and Anna Katharina Rödiger's children.
I am determined to mine as much information from these records as possible so as to discover as many of the relationships as possible.
So far, I have made my way through all of the birth/baptism and marriage records and have begun on the death records collecting people's names and pulling out the ones I know to add to the database, It is a long (and tedious) process and on a number of occasions I have called upon people with more knowledge of the language or script to help me pry the info from these records. So please be patient. I will try to post information from the records that I have figured out so that you can update and add to your records.
And I will also try to keep the Eichenauer:Rödiger ratio as even as possible, knowing that some of us are more of one than the other.
Wow. This ended up much longer than I intended. And sadly I have no interesting images to go along with this blog. Hope you made it this far.--Steve
