Finding a Place of Origin in Pre-WW II Europe

Finding a Place of Origin in Pre-WW II Europe

(A class project of the missionaries serving on the B-1 floor of the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah)

Overview of This Page

Object: Find a village/town of origin when only a larger country, region or ethnicity is known by using sources that are searchable by name.

Important Note: Using records created in the country of settlement is usually the best and easiest strategy. Examples are:

• Incoming passenger lists.
• Naturalization records.
• Military draft records.
• Social Security records.

Using the sources on this page may be more complex and less likely to bring success.

These sources include online databases and other records searchable by name.

This page does not include:

• Sources specific to a specific town or village.
• Browse only sources.
• Genealogical databases built on line or uploaded with GEDCOM files.

Europe General

• The Hamburg Passenger Lists 1850-1934 (includes village of last residence):
  Ancestry.com using personal membership (personal membership required)
  Ancestry.com using FS Library/FHC access (free access at FamilySearch Centers)

• United States Germans to America Index, 1850-1897
  Note: This website usually does not give a town, only a region in Germany.
• Emigration from Bremen:"Die Maus" Database online
  Emigrants transcribed from passenger lists covering the years 1830-1939.  Not every year is included.

• U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s Filby, P. William, ed.
  Ancestry.com using personal membership (personal membership required)
  Ancestry.com using FS Library/FHC access (free access at FamilySearch Centers)

Central Europe

Netherlands

• WieWasWie.nl Indexed vital civil records from 1811of the Netherlands. Twenty percent of records are church records.

Eastern Europe

Austrian Empire

Bohemia and Moravia

(Modern Czech Republic)

• Czech Immigration Passenger Lists by Leo Baca

German Empire

• Search Historical German city directoriesCompGen.de Metasearch
  Deselect all search items, then select item 2, Datenbank Historischer Adressbücher. Enter last name to search for at top.

• U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940 Ancestry membership
  U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940 From FS Library or FamilySearch Centers

• Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany 1874-1945. Ancestry membership required.

• The emigration from Germany to Russia in the years 1763 to 1862 by Karl Stumpp.

• Surname Index to 1852 Census of Hannover (only available for 3 counties)
  

• Hessen
  • Hessian State Archives User Instructions for Genealogical Research
  • Hessian State Archives User Instructions for Research on Emigrants

• Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, marriages, and burials 1500-1985:
  Ancestry.com using personal membership (personal membership required)
  Ancestry.com using FS Library/FHC access (free access at FamilySearch Centers)

Military

• German Casualties in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871
  Ancestry.com using personal membership Place of origin given for most soldiers who died, were wounded, or went missing.
  
• German World War I Casualty lists 1914-1919
  Notices of dead, missing, wounded, and captured of the "deutschen Kaiserreichs" (armies of Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Marines and special forces).
  Includes prisoners from England, France and Russia
  
• Archives of the International Prisoners of War World War I (1914-1919) Prisoners of War
  
• U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men born between 1898-1929
  Ancestry.com using personal membership (use Germany or other foreign country to limit place of birth)
  
• Bavaria, Germany, WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918
  Ancestry.com using personal membership Over 3.8 million names.
  

Prussian Poland

• Geneteka Polish Indexing Over 22 million indexed Polish records.

Pomerania

• Pomeranian Genealogical Association Indexing (over 4 million records indexed):
  Search Pomeranian Births
  Search Pomeranian Marriages

• Pomerania, Germany, Parish Register Transcripts, 1544-1883 Ancestry Membership required. Search index by name.
  Pomerania, Germany, Parish Register Transcripts, 1544-1883 From FS Library or FamilySearch Centers

Russian Empire

Russian Poland, and parts of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine

• Geneteka Polish Indexing Over 22 million indexed Polish records.

Ukraine

• Geneteka baza PolskiegoIndexed Urainian records.

• Odessa: a German-Russian Genealogical LibraryDatabases searchable by name.

• Black Sea German Research Database
  

Wiki editing helps

• Wiki Markup Language Cheat sheet for working with Wiki source code.

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