Published December 9, 2024
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyAndrea Bentschneider, the Hamburg, Germany–based professional genealogist who runs the service she calls the German Genealogy Collective, will be devoting a free online “masterclass” to this topic at 1 p.m. EST on Thursday titled “Finding Living Relatives of Your German Emigrant Ancestor.”
In the class, Bentschneider will cut through the maze of privacy laws and hard-to-access records, giving the participants strategies and tools needed to uncover these connections.
To sign up for the free masterclass or to look at the other offerings of the German Genealogy Collective, use the URL, https://germangenealogycollective.com/finding-living-relatives?am_id=jim2616
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Loyal “Roots & Branches” reader Eric “Ric” Bender of New Mexico recently checked in with some thoughts on last month’s review of Doug Tattershall’s Storytelling for Genealogists: Turning Family Lineage into Family History, calling it is interesting and thought-provoking. “Maybe struck a nerve too, since it touches on matters near to my own situation—how to present the material in an informative, logical way without boring everyone to tears,” Bender wrote.
“A relative suggested years ago that I present the history as a narrative,” Bender wrote. “I tend to agree, to a point. I don’t want a fill-in-the-blanks genealogy if I can help it. On the other hand, I don’t want to fill pages with general history applicable to each ancestor or to include a lot of speculation. I hope to make it interesting without writing a family history that is more like a family-oriented ‘historical novel.’”
Bender recalls he had a lot of trouble when he began looking at old Uncle Reuben’s family in late 1800’s Fort Wayne. “I found some fascinating pioneer biographies in the newspapers from about a 100 years ago. They were great,” he wrote. “Then I found some complaints about those stories being fiction—fictional biographies based on general history of the area and/or a mixture of other people’s biographies to make it all interesting. To me that’s essentially a historical novel. And I’m fine with it, as a novel. But it’s not a family history.”
The same relative suggested timelines. “I don’t disagree, but again, I don’t want to overdo it. (For example: rather than list all the events during my grandfather’s lifetime, I’ll probably do it along the lines of, ‘He was a boy when Geronimo was captured and missed the fall of Saigon by only a year; his boyhood witnessed the first automobiles and he was around for the first powered flight, and on to witness the Moon landings; from radio to color TVs.’ Or, of his grandfather: ‘His time paralleled that of Charles Dickens.’”
All of which are some great tips for people deciding to tell the family story!
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The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
Rick Bender
1 month ago
I wasn’t sure where you were going with that. (“Bender is a likeable fool!”)
As for cousins in Germany: How can you watch the movie “European Vacation” and not want to visit “cousins” in Germany?!
I try, a little, to not be one of those pesky relatives who drones on about the family history. (I suspect I’ve failed on more than one occasion.) But I have wondered, seriously, whether very distant cousins in Germany would have any interest in me or my family history. (If all of my siblings and many of my American cousins say, “Oh! Here he goes again!” Why would those in Germany be more interested?) And then, to what purpose? Unless they know their own family histories, our meeting is not much more than a gathering of total strangers.
On the other hand, traveling with Prof. Wolfgang Grams, we found interested parties in the hinterlands of Germany — people whose interests included their local genealogies and who were indeed interested in my research. (Maybe Herr Professor paid them to be!) No. Seriously, some newspaper write-ups, a four-page account of my visit written by a former town mayor and a long entry in their ongoing chronicle speak favorably with regard to my visit there.
As with my more immediate family, it probably depends on the person.
I’ll sit in on Thursday. — Rick