I no longer do research involving the use of Family History Library records because of health, mobility and transportation problems, complicated by the reduced number of hours when the local Family History Center is now open, unless this is ancillary to other research.
One kind of research I still do is listed in the description of the book, Where to Look for Hard-to-Find German-Speaking Ancestors in Eastern Europe. If interested in origin of certain groups of German immigrants to Eastern Europe, click here.
I also do research on the origin and meaning of German surnames. If interested, contact me at brandtfam@prodigy.net. But don't be optimistic that this will lead you to the place of origin of your immigrant ancestors, because it very rarely does.
If you have a mangled spelling of your immigrant ancestor's place of origin or uncertainties because many communities bore identical or very similar names, I may be able to help you.
I provide professional genealogical consultation, primarily with respect to researching German-speaking ancestors, including those who came from Eastern Europe as well as from the former German Empire. I have very limited computer knowledge, so please don't send e-mail queries, except for potentially reciprocal benefit or as specifically noted elsewhere. (I can't cope with a barrage of such queries.) However, unless a shortage of time is a more serious problem for you than a shortage of money, you will probably be better off getting one of my books first.
I have a substantial personal genealogical library, including more than half a dozen books on the origin and meaning of German surnames, numerous German-English dictionaries (the oldest one published in 1856), a pre-World War I German-language encyclopedia, a gazetteer listing both former German and present Polish names of communities in the territories transferred from Germany to Poland after World War II (and a partial list of those transferred in 1918-19), the latest German and English editions of the AGoFF Guide (the primary source for researching Germans east and southeast of contemporary Germany and Austria), the latest edition of Ribbe and Henning's classic Taschenbuch für Familienforschung, a guide to Polish archives, a German postal directory, maps of present-day Germany which include even the tiniest hamlet, and almost equally detailed maps for Poland, Switzerland, Alsace and the Be-Ne-Lux countries.
I also have access to the extensive Germanic Genealogy Society library collection, which includes Meyer's pre-World War I gazetteer providing information about every locality then in the German Empire, and the University of Minnesota libraries, including the Borchert Map Library, among the best cartographic libraries in the country. Both the GGS and UM libraries are much closer to home than the Family History Center and are open long college hours. I will do research involving the use of these resources.
I have the addresses of almost every place in Germany which has resources pertaining to researching German-speaking ancestors from east of present-day Germany and Austria, and will either provide you with pertinent addresses or write to these places on your behalf.
I still undertake a limited number of deciphering and translation assignments. If you only need a translation, others can probably do it for you faster than I can.
However, if you can appreciate the BIG difference between translating material and deciphering documents, mostly in the Gothic script, where many of the letters bear little resemblance to what they look like on the model letter chart, you may want to contact me. Many translators either are not decipherers or are not very interested in the hard, time-consuming work of solving the puzzle as to what all those "crow's feet" really stand for, since simple translation tends to be a lot more lucrative. Deciphering may bear a greater resemblance to code-breaking than to translation.
You have to realize, of course, that deciphering one word which seems totally illegible at first, second or third glance can take a lot longer than translating a page of clearly written material in extreme cases. Unlike some people, I don't object to reviewing the work another translator has done, but incompletely or with question marks because of a lack of deciphering skills, rather than a lack of translating skills. Years of reading hastily scribbled college exams, as I have done, probably represent the best training you can get in deciphering, although the amount of experience a person has had in dealing with semi-legible records also makes a difference. In this case, practice may not make perfect, but it is a distinct advantage, since certain kinds of variations in writing do recur among various writers, despite the uniqueness of each one.
This web page first posted on Prodigy August 9, 1999.