ROOTS & BRANCHES

I did a webinar for the German Interest Group of the Eastside Genealogical Society in Washington state last year, which Julia Westerberg watched and as often happens with virtual speaking gigs, she hit me up with a question after the fact.

“In a 1871 New York City marriage license, the bride to be states she was born in ‘Illemdthadt, H.D,’” Westerberg wrote. “I know she was born in Germany but can’t find this birth place anywhere. I suspect it’s misspelled but can’t come up with the actual place.”

 The marriage license related to a probable sister of her father’s maternal grandfather, who went by the surname Tremps.  “But we suspected he changed his name as Tremps is not recognized in German surname lists,” Westerberg wrote. “He went to Indiana from New York City as an 11 year old on an orphan train.  Children’s Aid Society records don’t indicate how he got to them and their spelling is slightly different.”

Westerberg wrote that the marriage license was discovered by plugging in the names of the orphan train ancestor’s parents and came up with a “Trempert,” which was spelled differently on the supposed sister’s death record.  “He never mentioned having a sister so that was a surprise,” she wrote. “But if true, this is the first time we have seen mention of a specific place in Germany.”

Of course, Westerberg has hit on what’s often the second-most difficult task in Germany genealogy, which the most difficult being finding an immigrant’s village of origin in American records.

But right behind it is what she’s encountering: identifying a town name that doesn’t appear to be a real town in Germany!

Here’s my analysis and the sources involved in it:

• The “H.D.” is almost certainly Hessen-Darmstadt, the nickname for the Grand Duchy of Hessen in the 19th century.
• I looked first at MeyersGaz.org for the spelling on the marriage license and it’s not found (either with the spelling or by asking MeyersGaz for soundalikes).
• Then I looked in Roger P. Minert’s Hesse Place Name Indexes and found Ilbenstadt, a decent match.
• Kevan Hansen’s Map Guides to German Parish Registers: Grandduchy of Hessen also has this town name.
• Putting Ilbenstadt into MeyersGaz comes up with this listing: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/10870004

My recommendations for Westerberg were to look for a church marriage for the individual since sometimes those records contain more information than the civil marriage documents, as well as often have more authentic spellings of personal and place names.

I also thought German-language newspapers either for the marriage or the person’s obituary might give more information.

And, of course, consulting the church records of Ilbenstadt for baptisms for these siblings. FamilySearch.org gives access to a database of Roman Catholic records from the Diocese of Mainz.