Hi David at Maylands, Frederick mailling from Mindarie! Many thanks for your mail and the information. My problem, one of them, is that my man left no information in the form of documents as to his sailng days, I have only his marriage and death certificates that show that he was a ships cook/steward. I have no knowledge of any ships that he may have sailed on and the records in Newfoundland I believe are held in cardboard boxes labelled with ships names! The people there obviously cannot undertake any searches without a ships name! I have a dvd of a Crew List Index Project, which contains 269000 records of sailors, their ships and journeys they undertook from Liverpool for the years 1863 (Emil would probably have been in Liverpool about that time) to 1913, (again he might have still been sailing as late as that), but I can find no records for Emil. I know he changed his name to Engelbert but I also can find no records for that name on the dvd, and I followed up a suggestion from an old Aunt that he changed his name to Davis! when he was sailing, but again, of the hundreds of Davis's on the list none of their information matches that for my man. I think Emil must have built up a log over the years of signing on (he must have done that surely) and that log is probably in Newfoundland in one of the boxes I mentioned. As to Emil's precise birth place, I have trawled through all of the LDS archives for all of Germany, and although there are many many Engelbrecht records I have found none for my man or his father Georg. Hamburg, it seems, had most of their records destroyed by those Britischer bombers in WW2 (and your man helped form the RAF!) I am about to have some film sent over from the LDS of Hamburg church records that may have survived and I will also request a copy of the Hamburg police files you mentioned. Other than that, I think I am stimied Again thanks for your mail Best Regards Frederick

G'day Frederick You're right, the key to the Crew Agreements is knowing the name of the ship and year of the voyage. I was extremely fortunate some twenty or so years ago. I had written to the Archivist in Newcastle asking for information from the Electoral Rolls, figuring that if Asmus Kunde was listed, he'd been naturalised. I found out that you can be on the Electoral Roll for Local Elections without being naturalised, so this was no help. A couple of days after he'd replied to my enquiry, the archivist was searching the Admissions Register for the Marine School in South Shields for someone else and because Asmus Kunde is a non-English name, it stuck out when he came across it in the Register. As a consequence he wrote a second letter (which actually arrived first!). The Admissions Register was formatted like a Crew Agreement, and from this I had the ship's name and year that I needed. Two sources which from your email you don't appear to have tried is the "General Register of Shipping and Seaman" in Cardiff, and the records held in Southampton. < http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Merchant_Seaman_and_Shipping_Records > Also, what about the Seamen's Union? Have you tried through them? The Union has been amalgamated and is now part of another one (not sure which one though). The LDS have not had access to microfilm the majority of Hamburg's records. In Germany, the majority of Lutheran Church records are in Church archives NOT in government ones. The Lutheran church has realised that they can generate some income by retaining control over their own records. The destruction of records which you mention, I think refers not to Hamburg, but to Bremen where the shipping lists in particular were a major loss. However, the RAF did bomb my Great Great Aunt's pub at Neueburg 19, Altona! Another set of Hamburg records which may help you get established on Hamburg records are the City Directories (Adreßbücher) which the LDS have on microfilm from 1712-1949. < https://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titlefilmnotes&columns=*%2C0%2C0&titleno=999033&disp=Adre%C3%9Fb%C3%BCcher+der+St++ > I have also used the services of Andrea Bentscheider of "Beyond History" in Hamburg who is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. (I'd try the directories first before paying for professional help). < http://www.beyond-history.com/en/ > By the way, I've been a non-church member volunteer at the LDS Dianella FHL since '91. My current shift is Saturday afternoons, so if you want a change from all the drifting sand in Mindarie ..... :-} It's in Wordsworth Ave, opposite the Inglewood swimming pool on Alexander Drive. Cheers David Armstrong Maylands, Western Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: Frederick Englebert To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 6:10 PM Subject: [ENG-LIV] Hamburg ancestor Hi David at Maylands, Frederick mailling from Mindarie! Many thanks for your mail and the information. My problem, one of them, is that my man left no information in the form of documents as to his sailng days, I have only his marriage and death certificates that show that he was a ships cook/steward. I have no knowledge of any ships that he may have sailed on and the records in Newfoundland I believe are held in cardboard boxes labelled with ships names! The people there obviously cannot undertake any searches without a ships name! I have a dvd of a Crew List Index Project, which contains 269000 records of sailors, their ships and journeys they undertook from Liverpool for the years 1863 (Emil would probably have been in Liverpool about that time) to 1913, (again he might have still been sailing as late as that), but I can find no records for Emil. I know he changed his name to Engelbert but I also can find no records for that name on the dvd, and I followed up a suggestion from an old Aunt that he changed his name to Davis! when he was sailing, but again, of the hundreds of! Davis's on the list none of their information matches that for my man. I think Emil must have built up a log over the years of signing on (he must have done that surely) and that log is probably in Newfoundland in one of the boxes I mentioned. As to Emil's precise birth place, I have trawled through all of the LDS archives for all of Germany, and although there are many many Engelbrecht records I have found none for my man or his father Georg. Hamburg, it seems, had most of their records destroyed by those Britischer bombers in WW2 (and your man helped form the RAF!) I am about to have some film sent over from the LDS of Hamburg church records that may have survived and I will also request a copy of the Hamburg police files you mentioned. Other than that, I think I am stimied Again thanks for your mail Best Regards Frederick