ROOTS & BRANCHES

As “Roots & Branches” continues to work its way through what constitutes a “core collection” of Pennsylvania German genealogy resources, it was promised that the next column would feature another giant in the field who is like a real-life water dowser for finding the European villages of origin for immigrants.

This “village finder” is Annette K. Burgert, who wrote a dozen-and-a-half books and monographs during a two-decade span from 1983 to 2000 that brought together European and American information on immigrant families, documenting the origins of thousands of First Wave Germans.

For her efforts, Burgert is a Fellow of both the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and the American Society of Genealogists, the latter designation being acknowledged as genealogy’s “cream of the crop.”

Burgert’s volumes took an area—or sometimes a single village—and gave the connections in the European records (primarily church records but also a variety of other documents such as manumissions) with a variety of American primary sources, including church records, probates, land records and naturalization documents as are found.

Her fulcrum is the passenger lists and Oaths of Allegiance published in Pennsylvania German Pioneers, since this is the transition between Old and New Worlds. What she found is that many immigrants traveled in packs and therefore the list might lead to the village of origin for many families.

In this way, a lead in an American church burial record for one immigrant, for instance, would be multiplied into finding the origins of many once the Oaths list was found. Working in the German church records then would suggest even more families whose American documents didn’t explicitly give their European origins but are proven indirectly when it turns out they resettled in America with families from their villages in the “Old Country.”

In addition to her articles showcasing immigrant origins (one of which focused on a Swiss village, the rest on southwestern German villages and areas), Burgert also wrote a number of research aids on Pennsylvania German methodologies and sources on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately for the German genealogy world but understandably from Burgert’s vantage point, she stopped publishing after many of her works began to be used by others without credit.

Found in many libraries with a Pennsylvania German collection (and still available for purchase online) is Burgert’s “master index” to all her published works.

When I would see Annette and her late husband Richard “Dick” Burgert and conferences, he would remind me that the master index was his idea because he became weary of people asking about whether particular surnames could be found in her works. Dick also used to tell me he earned a dime commission on every sale of the index.