• German Genealogy Pointers,  Mennonites

    “Our” Mennonite Churches in Europe

    As you may have noticed, a “goodly portion” (to quote my father-in-law) portion of both sides of the Henss & Rabideau families have roots in Amish/ Mennonite/ Anabaptist traditions.  Out of curiosity, actually out of a desire to find church building photos, I did a little web research on our families’ past church homes.  As you might have guessed, nothing identifiable remains of our Prussian/ Poland Mennonite congregations, the Second World War took care of that.  However, I have stumbled across a number of our families’ Alsatian congregations on the Internet. It is wonderful to see that many of our predecessors’ beliefs and traditions live on and that our family’s…

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  • German Genealogy Pointers,  Prussia Maps

    Finding Former Eastern German Place Names

    One of the great challenges in researching areas like the former German Eastern Provinces is that they are all gone- governments, people, Churches, libraries, Universities, and yes, in many cases, houses and villages as well.  In an effort to help me, and perhaps others, identify place names, I am creating this document with its eclectic cross reference materials. Hopefully these documents, websites, etc. will prove useful to those of us who have difficulty in finding ‘our family’s’ former German places and locations. Former Prussian Places & Locations (Westpreußen u. mehr/ West Prussia & more) Documents Ravenstein’s Atlas des Deutschen Reichs 9000-Village-Names-in-Prussia 1.5 MB Errata for document: Zeyersvorderkampen = Kępiny Małe…

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