ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I started devoting a column now and then to what a “core collection” of German genealogy resources looks like, I though that some of the “Roots & Branches” installments might be about a single book and that others might deal with several concerning one subtopic of the field.

But then there’s the bibliography of a living titan in the German genealogy field, Roger P. Minert of Utah.

As you’ll see, Minert’s works cover several facets related to German genealogy, but possibly his most significant contribution to the field came with the publication of his book German Census Records 1816–1916: The When, Where and How of a Valuable Genealogical Resource. I dub this work as such because until Minert ferreted out those documents, they weren’t even thought to be extant—even by the German archivists in whose archives he found them!

In addition to the census book, here are other significant volumes and series helmed by Minert:

• Researching in Germany (authored along with Shirley J. Riemer and Susan E. Sirrine), which is an excellent handbook for those traveling to Germany and other German-speaking lands, covering all the logistics necessary for a successful research trip.
• The series titled Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, one for each German state and Prussian Provinz in the Second German Empire. Minert pioneered the reverse indexes, which are valuable when the ending of place name is found in a document but the beginning letter or letters of it are obscure.
• The series titled German Immigrants in American Church Records, still in progress, attempts to pull together all documents from congregational and pastoral registers that identify and immigrant’s place of origin in Europe. Minert has acted as the editor for a team of researchers who have covered most of the Midwest in close to 30 volumes.
• Spelling Variations in German Names tackles the differing phonetics between German and English and how to overcome the problems involved.
• Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents: Analyzing German, Latin, and French in Historical Manuscripts is scholarly volume, filled with examples, that serves as the “on steroids” version of Katherine Schober’s book Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting mentioned in “Roots & Branches” a month ago.
• German Residential Records for Genealogists: Tracking Your Ancestor from Place to Place in Germany is organized in the same fashion as the census book and covers the registrations that German states began keeping in the 1800s.
• For those needing help with one of Germany’s neighboring lands, Minert and Charlotte Noelle Champenois have written Austrian Family History Research: Sources and Methods.

I don’t use the word “titan” lightly; there are more of Minert’s titles on my bookshelf than any other author.