Hi all,

Headed to Europe for two weeks in November/December and doing London, Paris, Lucerne and probably Vienna.

Recently found documents showing my great great grandfather was baptized in 1844 in Streich u. Vorderweibbuch, Wurttemburg, Germany.

Anyone familiar with this area? If I do a night or two there, any chances at all I may find out where he was baptized or if it's around or any of the original churches or homes are still there?

Many thanks,

Allison

I don't know the area myself but the German Wikipedia gives Vorderweißbuch (the 'ß' is equivalent to a 'ss', and the 'u.' means 'und', and) and Streich along with Birkenweißbuch as villages composing the small town of Vorderweißbuch, which itself partly composes the council area of Berglen,:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berglen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berglen

The English is not as helpful, try using Google Translate to view the German page. The German page also has some maps which might be helpful.

Berglen has been a council area since 1972; shortly before that it was called Buchenberg. The area belonged to Klosteramt Adelberg, which belonged to Württemberg since the Reformation.

There is also a short discussion of the religious persuasion of the community which nowadays seems to be predominantly Lutheran (evangelisch-lutherisch).

You may well find a (possibly former) church in Vorderweissbuch as many smaller communities still have buildings and houses preserved, but obviously large parts of the country were totally obliterated in WWII and rebuilt without respect for prior town planning out of necessity and you would have to investigate this to see whether two days there would be a good expenditure of your time.

What was his religion, or the name of the church? Perhaps I could search for an existing community for you. They may have information about other (prior) churches in the area. You should probably do this homework before you go as it is very unlikely that you will get to look at archival material in the village itself. Most historical records are kept in state archives nowadays and if you give me a few more details I might be able to point you to some good websites. In the meantime, here is food for thought:

https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Ger...ch_Directories

Other states have good centralised records; you would probably be looking for Baden-Württemberg.

Lavandula

Also ask the moderators (use the triangle with the exclamation mark) to tag your posts with 'Germany' as you will get more responses and people will be able to find your posts, or they will just fall away with the tide ...

Lavandula

https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Bad...Church_Records


This will probably have everything you need to get started!

Lavandula

I found the church books for the Lutheran church parish of Oppelsbohm (nearby) which go back to the 1690s. Wondering if this parish takes in your villages.

Also you might be interested in the Adressbuchdatenbank, which has addresses from Bergen in it - this might help you locate houses that belonged to your family in the 1840s.

http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Berglen

(again use Google Translate)

Lavandula

Oppelsbohm was definitely on the document I have for him, but it's in German. Going to check these sites out, thanks!!!

If it's not handwritten in that spidery script, Google Translate and Word Lens both have a function where you you just hold your phone over the foreign word and it provides a translation. That might be helpful for your document.

Lavandula