Dorothea and others, Four years ago I began reading Germany church records on microfilm at my local Family History Center. I find it much easier now, but it is very difficult at first. This book helped me very much: IF I CAN YOU CAN: DECIPHER GERMANIC RECORDS by Edna M. Bentz ISBN: 0-9615420-0-4 I got my copy at a genealogy conference, but you should be able to order it somewhere. Good luck. Jean [email protected]
> Dorothea and others, > > Four years ago I began reading Germany church records on microfilm at my > local Family History Center. I find it much easier now, but it is very > difficult at first. This book helped me very much: > > IF I CAN YOU CAN: DECIPHER GERMANIC RECORDS by Edna M. Bentz > ISBN: 0-9615420-0-4 > > I started in similar ways in 1986 and have read 100's of pages. I have made myself helps for Swiss records that were specific to a whole church book which I translated for a church. Then I did other churches. Then I helped a lot of people around NE Indiana to read their documents. Each area of Germany has specific sort of style based a lot on the Pastor's or Civil Government clerk's handwriting at that time. Most of the handwriting can look like chicken scratch at first and others records look like a learned person wrote the records. If you can make copies and have a person who works with computers doing color management and gray scale the handwriting gets enhanced if you need to bring out the ink or reduce the blackness on a page. I have experienced turning pages from unreadable in both extremes to legible documents. Another tip: lightly trace the words on the page on your own paper and take it home for further study and evaluation. This gets very tiring to do it for many words but in having to read through 150 years of records for one northern German parish and having to trace out 15 words seemed a bargain. I have researched online handwriting styles. Google should be able to help. Best to you! Kay Marie
My deceased wife wrote the book "If I can, etc"....it's available on Amazon...my daughter now sells it through Amazon. [email protected]