Online registers of 19th-C in south-western Baden

I've found that registers of 19th-Century births, marriages, and deaths are online for the southern parts of Baden. These are from Standesämter that are in the Freiburg adminstrative district. The Freiburg distict includes the purple Kriese in the map provided.

Use these steps to find online records for your ancestors:

1. Use one of these links:

• Magenta (red) area on the map Staatsarchiv Karlsruhe for a list of - 28 Amtsgerichte (Area Registrars)
• Violet area on the map Staatsarchiv Freiburg - 35 Amtsgerichte
• Aqua (green) area Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg - undefined
• Blue area Staatsarchiv Sigmarinen - undefined

1. Select an Amtsgericht from the list in the left column, A listing of its first 20 books of registry then appears in the right column.
2. Select ALLE (above the slide bar on the right) to list the books that are online from the Amtsgericht.
3. Find your town of interest. Several different register books may be available.

Great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger (1839-1919)

My great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger was born in Breisach am Rhein in 1839. Her birth on 29 May 1839 is documented in the civil registers of the city. The record is available through this online source,as well as those of her siblings Carl Julius (1833-1833), Anton Herrmann (1836-), Maria Anna Josepha (1838-), and Maria Anna (1843-).

The records of Breisach am Rhein are available in several volumes with the following groupings of years:

• 1810-1818
• 1819-1826
• 1827-1834
• 1835-1840
• 1841-1847
• 1848-1854
• 1855-1858
• 1859-1864
• 1865-1870

I have reviewed only the first and second volumes in any great detail. It is likely that records of marriages and deaths for family members after 1842 will not be in this town. Both her father Georg Salinger and mother Katherina Vogel-Salinger were born in the first decade of the 19th C, and I expect they might have deaths reported at age 65 or younger. If the siblings survived and remained in Breisach, any of their marriages would be reported at age 40 or younger.

I am pursuing further research in similar online sources for Rastatt, Ettlingen, Karlsruhe/Durlach, and Kònigheim, cities in Baden where other ancestors came from.

The Salinger Family

Revisions on 3 April 2019 update this section with more recent research.

My great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger-Ohnsat (1839-1919) emigrated from Baden-Württemberg in 1871. Her family lived in Breisach from about 1832 to about 1842, while her father worked as an Amtsdiener. Another family headed by Georg Selinger lived in the outlying and smaller settlement of Hochstetten at least from 1835. Leopoldine's family name was spelled "Salinger" and occasionally "Selinger" in Germany, and its spelling "Sallinger" occurred sometime during immigration, naturalization, or resettlement.

Her parents were Georg Salinger (1803-1856) and Katherina Vogel (about 1810-1862). Georg was identified as an Amtsdiener in several birth documents for his children. This occupation is an honorific today or a ceremonial duty that is given as a political award. In the 19th Century, an Amtsdiener could have performed a wide variety of clerical tasks in a registrar's office or could have been little more than a manager of visitors to the office (asking citizens to wait in the lobby and escorting them to the registrar's desk when the clerk was ready to take their information). In older German usage, there may have been distinctions in the function of an Amtsdiener, a Büttel, a Fronbote, a Gerichtsdiener, and a Saaldiener; however, modern German usage does not imply great differences, except that a Gerichtsdiener is associated with civil and criminal courts. Simple translations could be among these: an "usher," a "beadle," or a "messenger" of a municipal court. The Zedler Universal-Lexikon (1731-1754) has this definition:

Amts-Knecht, Amts-Diener, ist ein geschworner Bote, welcher das, was vor Gerichte geschen soll,  durch des Amtmanns Befehl denen Partheben überbringen und ankundigen muß. Wie er denn auch die Amts-Delinquenten einbringen, und dem Nachrichter überlieffern muß. [Band I (A-AM), p. 898, bottom of column 1817]

That is,

Official servant is a sworn messenger who must, at the bailiff's command, deliver to those taking part in the proceedings those charged persons who must be tried before a court of law. In the court proceedings, the Amtsdiener announces the availability of those charged. He must also bring in the charged parties and leave them with the reporter.

Rastatt (left), Ettlingen, and Durlach (right, top) in the
Karlsruhe region along the Rhein River

Leopoldine's father came from Rastatt, and her mother from Durlach or Ettlingen, about 80 and 90 miles north of Breisach. Both Durlach and Ettlingen are within Karlsruhe Kreis, and Rastatt is a historically important city along the middle Rhein. Georg Salinger married Katharina Vogel on 3 December 1829 in St. Peter and Paul Catholic church in Durlach, and two children were born there: Carolina Christina in 1830 and Barbara Luise in 1831.

Although movement from one town to another within a few miles was fairly common, the distance to Breisach seems unusual. I suspected that Georg Salinger had performed the work of Amtsdiener in Rastatt and was recommended for the post in Breisach. However, the marriage record for the couple states that he was "sergeant/junior officer with the Guards Cavalry Regiment at Gottsau." It's possible that he left military service and worked in a governmental bureau before the family moved to Breisach.

I have only preliminary research for the generation of these 2nd-great-grandparents. I have found documentation of their marriage in the registers of Durlach and Rastatt. The Rastatt register entry is a certified copy of the Durlach register:

Marriage registry of Georg Sallinger and Katharina Vogel,
Rastatt, Germany (two consecutive pages in the image)

Abschrift: Auszug aus dem Trauungsbuche der katholischen Stadtpfarrei Durlach, S. 38, §5

Im Jahre tausend acht hundert neun und zwanzig den dritten Dezember nachmnittags halb zwei Uhr nach vorhergegangenen zweimaligen Aufgebothen, welche am vier und zwanzigsten Sonntag nach Pfingsten und ersten Sonntag im Advent zu Durlach und Karlsruhe geschehen sind, nach erhaltener Entlassung des Bräutigams von großherzoglich katholischen Stadtpfarramte zu Karlsruhe und nicht erhobenen Einspruche; sind von Unterzeichneten getraut und eingeseegnet worden: Georg Sallinger von Rastatt /: neuangehender Bürger von Rastatt:/, Unteroffizier vom Garde Cavallerie Regiment zu Gottsau, ehelicher Sohn des verstorbenen Sallinger Leopold von Rastatt, mit der ledigen Katharina Vogel von Ettlingen, Tochter der Katharina Vogel von hier, Ehegattin des Marand Würzburger, Schutzbürger und Leistschneider [= Leistenschneider] dahier.

Zeugen waren: die beiden Unteroffiziere: Carl Oehlwang von Karlsruhe und Stephan Bischof von Kisselbronn [= Kieselbronn] bei Pforzheim.
Durlach d. 3. Decemb. 1829. V Baumann, Pfarrer.

gegeben Durlach d. 7t. Dezember 1829 In fidem extractus: V. Baumann, Pfarrer
Zur Beglaubigung der treuen Abschrift
Rastatt d. 20t Dezember 1829
Schung, Dekan und Stadtpfarrer

Translation:

Copy: Extract from the marriage book of the Durlach Catholic town parish. Page 38, paragraph 5.

Marriage registry of Georg Sallinger and Katharina Vogel,
Durlach, Germany

In the year 1829 on December 3 at 1:30 in the afternoon, after the announcement of two marriage banns that occurred on the 24th Sunday after Pentecost and the 1st Sunday of Advent in Durlach and in Karlsruhe; after receiving the release of the groom from the grand ducal Catholic town parish office in Karlsruhe, with no objections raised; were married and blessed by the undersigned: Georg Sallinger from Rastatt (prospective citizen from Rastatt.), sergeant/junior officer with the Guards Cavalry Regiment at Gottsau, legitimate son of the deceased Sallinger, Leopold from Rastatt; with the unmarried Katharina Vogel from Ettlingen, daughter of Katharina Vogel from here[ [Durlach], wife of the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker here.

Witnesses were: both sergeants/junior officers Carl Oehlwang from Karlsruhe and Stephan Bischof from Kisselbronn [= Kieselbronn] near Pforzheim.Durlach,
December 3, 1829. V. Baumann, Clergyman.

Written in Durlach on December 7, 1829 Faithfully extracted: V. Baumann, Clergyman
In certification of a true/accurate copy.
Rastatt, December 20, 1829
Schung, Deacon and Town Clergyman.

Typically ages of the bride and groom are given in a marriage record, especially if they are young adults. Since the ages are not given, I presume that neither is of younger age. I guess that Georg was then about 30 years old, and that Katharina was perhaps younger than 25. So I estimated their births to be 1799 and 1807 (plus or minus 5 years), respectively. These dates establish a search range for their birth or baptism records. Recently I found Georg's birth-baptism record in Rastatt: 21 February 1803.

Officers' dress uniforms of the Rastatt regimental cavalry.

Georg Salinger's home of origin in the marriage entry is of some interest. He is given a "prospective" citizenship in Durlach; he was "release" from the "grand ducal Catholic town parish office in Karlsruhe," and his father Leopold is from Rastatt. Likely, then, Georg was born in Rastatt at the end of the 18th Century, then a city of 3000 residents. Until 1771, Rastatt was the residence of the margrave of Baden-Baden, with a large palace at the center of the city. The residence of the margrave moved in the late 18th Century to another city, but a military garrison remained in Rastatt. Perhaps the young Georg began his military service in Rastatt and was moved then to Karlsruhe to serve the grand duke. (The city was the location for peace negotiations between France, Prussia, and Austria in the last years of the 18th Century, known as the Congrès de Rastatt. However, the negotiations had only one catastrophic result: the murder of two French diplomats and the serious wounding of a third.) I presume Georg was intending to live in Durlach, as evidenced by the parenthetical description of neuangehender Bürger von Rastatt, "prospective citizen from Rastatt."

Katharina Vogel's home of origin in the marriage entry is also of interest. Her mother's residence is given as Durlach, but the bride's residence is given as Ettlingen. Of additional interest for research is the identity of her mother's husband as "the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker here [in Durlach]."

The Georg Salinger family returned to Durlach in time for the birth of their seventh child, Maria Anna, on 29 August 1843. Because Katharina would have reached 40 soon after then, it's unlikely that more children came to the family. Georg Salinger died on 4 January 1856 in Tauberbischofsheim. 

I continue research for the birth, reason for living in Ettlingen, and death of Katharina Vogel—and for information about her parents.

Leopoldine's paternal grandfather was named in her parents' marriage record: Leopold Sallinger from Rastatt. I have found the marriage of Leopold Salinger to Margaretha Mayer on 11 January 1802 in Rastatt and his death on 12 July 1821. I estimate his birth to be around 1767; similarly, I estimate Margaretha Mayer's birth to be about 1775 and her death to have been about 1850. Her paternal great-grandparents may be Joseph Salinger (about 1745-1800) and Franziska Idamann (about 1740-1800) and Georg Mayer (about 1740-1800) married 8 August 1768 to Maria Anna Maisch (about 1760-1800).


Leopoldine's maternal grandmother was identified as Katharina Vogel from Karlsruhe-Durlach, who was married to "the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker [in Durlach]." I believe this indicates that Marand is a step-parent who came originally from Würzburg. The mother Katharina married Morand Würzburger on 30 May 1814 in Durlach. I estimate the elder Katharina married an unknown Vogel before 1807 in Durlach, and that she was born before 1780, probably in Durlach. However, it is possible that the younger Katharina Vogel was a birth outside of marriage (once called illegitimate). Leopoldine's maternal great grandparents may be Martin Vogel and Margaretha Wagner.

Finding the correct town and parish for your German ancestors

For the genealogist, it's easy to get bogged down in adding information from family births, marriages, and deaths among the many cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Usually a family member who knows of your interest sends a note that Uncle Junior has died. It's up to you to find the obituary and document the date and location for the death and burial, corroborate what you already know with the list of survivors and the biographic details.

But keeping track of your contemporaries isn't really enough. You know that a dedicated family researcher goes back toward the beginnings of the family. And often seeks information about parents and siblings of those who have married into the family.

At some point, the family researcher comes to the first immigrant from another country. The research becomes multi-national and usually multi-lingual. That jump across the ocean gets harder and harder for each generation removed from the immigrant. More to the point, it's more difficult to find the town that a family member emigrated from.

Accumulated research can turn up information about the other country in several locations.

• Civil records (birth, marriage, divorce, or death) that name the parents or spouse and identify the person's home
• Civil records for an immigrant that identify the country of birth or former citizenship
• United States federal census enumerations, which ask the place of birth, year of birth or age, and place of birth for each parent
• Church records (baptism, confirmation, wedding, or funeral) that may name the parents, spouse, or previous church that documents the person's baptism or marriage
• Anecdotes from contemporaries or children of the immigrant
• Biographical sketches from contemporary newspapers
• Tombstone entries
• Memorial cards from funeral services
• Obituary notices and biographical sketches

Only on occasion do these sources certainly identify the town of emigration. And even if they do, the information must be met with some suspicion. After all, most of the sources contain information provided second-hand, from relatives of the immigrant. And memory fades, even for the immigrant, who may have left at an early age.

My experience in finding the town of emigration includes great ease and great difficulty.

• My great grandparents John M. Kohn and Susanna Reinert were part of a family that already has many family researchers. Even before I began to research, their towns of origin in western Germany, close to the Luxembourg border, were known to be Wasserliesch and Igel.
• My great grandparents Robert Ohnsat and Leopoldina Salinger were ciphers. An elderly cousin had some anecdotes that placed his home at Nysa or on the Nysa River in Silesia and her home at Frankfurt. This was partially true for my great grandfather, but not even close for my great grandmother.
• My great grandparents Anton Deneke and Maria Anna Stephan had passed on information about their homes of birth, but not much more. His birthplace was known as Hannover, and hers as Königheim in Baden. Both turned out to be correct, though Hannover was the seat of the district government, and his actual birthplace was Brakel in Kreis Höxter.
• My great grandparents Richard Butler and Mary Ellen Cummings were part of a family that includes several family researchers. As I began my work, I soon found the researchers who had information back to the generation that lived in Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland.

Especially for the Ohnsat, Salinger, Deneke, and Stephan families, I found the International Genealogical Index (IGI) to be of some help. This aid allows you to enter a person's name and other data, which can search information for matches. You can then look through the matches for a likely location to research. I have provided more information in another post, the International Genealogical Index (IGI).

If you have a reliable town name, you can use the FamilySearch Catalog to enter the country name and town name. The catalog will list the corrected country, district, and county in addition to the town. If the town had a church that allowed its parish registers to be microfilmed, the catalog connects to a record that identifies the microfilms. With the microfilm numbers, you can order the microfilm at your local LDS genealogy library.

If you have a town name that is less reliable, you should use a couple of these online sources to find a corrected spelling or a correct district for the town.

• Contemporary online mapping, such as Google Earth. This can provide a search for the town name, though it does not typically offer alternatives to misspelled names.
• A listing of town names by country and area, such as the Global Gazetteer. Select a country, and then select a region or begin searching right away for the town name.
• Go to a version of Wikipedia for a specific language (for example, French, German, Irish, Italian, or one of nearly 50 others) and enter the town name. Wikipedia provides a large number of alternatives if the spelling is not exact.
• Try to find a web page for the town by using the format www.TOWN.COUNTRYCODE (for example, www.Wasserliesch.de).
• Try to find the town name from a web page for the region or state by using the format www.REGION.COUNTRYCODE (for example, www.trier-land.de, www.hessen.de, or www.deutschland.de).

Happy hunting!
Tom
© Thomas G. Kohn, 2013.

Notes for further additions to this post

The records that cite Mesenich, Igel and Igel, Trier are listing the community (or parish), followed by the next higher level of church or civil government. In the opening pages of a microfilm of parish records, you would see listings of towns for Parish, Deaconate, Community, Civil Region (Pfarrei, Dekonat, Gemeinde, Regierungsbezirk). Also the microfilm's first pages would identify the archive (for example, the Trier Bistumsarchiv).

Mesenich and Metzdorf, being smaller towns that didn't (ever? occasionally?) have a parish church of their own, would be documented in the parish records of the next larger, nearer community where the family went for church services. This could be Langsur, Griwenich, Wasserbillig, or even Igel. If you go to Google Earth, you can see that all of these towns are within easy walking distance; none more than perhaps 5 miles distant, even by a winding road along the river.

So if you start searching microfilms of parish registers, you have a bit of duplicated effort, until you find the first entry of relevance for your Konzemn ancestors. From that point on, you might assume that at least for a couple generations, the family wouldn't change its choice of parish.

I do have a few of the many church records of which parishes were aligned with a deaconry. Their information is pretty well represented by the catalog structure of the LDS microfilm library.

Translated Phrases in Latin Parish Registers

Many parish registers of Germany and the United States contain entries written in Latin. The true difficulty arises in deciphering the handwriting itself. In German records, the handwriting may use a writing style called Sütterlin. Tough the letters are uniformly written, they are very distinct from the letters of other styles.

The prospect of translating the Latin should not be daunting, since each priest typically used a formulated entry for a birth, marriage, or burial. Here are typical Latin entries and their translations to English and German.

Birth and Baptism

Marriage

Death and Burial

© Thomas G. Kohn, 2013.