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The following LINKS will take you to topics addressed on this main page.

Introduction

Tools for Finding Ancestral Locations

Researching in Other Countries of the World

Internet Resources

Image Galleries

Our Gazetteer of U.S. Physical, Cultural & Historical Features

LINKS to the countries in which our direct ancestors were either born, married, or died.

United Kingdom

Germany (Deutschland)

United States

Switzerland

France

(République Française)

The Netherlands

Successful genealogical research often hinges on identifying the localities in which our ancestors lived. Thus one must fully realize that resources which enhance our knowledge of the places inhabited by our ancestors are almost as important as their names. Once we know the vicinity, we are in a better position to consult the records and histories in an effort to piece together the lives of our fore-bearers. As such, the primary purpose of these web pages is to provide you with a clearer picture of places we’ve identified as the ancestral locations of our direct ancestors.

As you explore this area of our website you will find that we address each place with a separate and distinct page about each Country, State, and county, (or its equivalent). Within each county page we have attempted to address many of the specific places, or what we refer to as the gen-sites identified during our research. These gen-sites may be as broad as a city or town, or a specific as the location of a home-site. In addition, you will also find the surnames of persons who lived within the specified ancestral locations, as well as links to additional resources that will assist with your research of the locality.

Denterming ancestral locations

How to find the

Ancestral Location

Mapping the Ancestral Location

Ancestral Locations in Central Europe

Our Favorite Map & Atlas Webpages

Our Favorite Gazetteers

HOW TO FIND THE ANCESTRAL LOCATION

To find information about an ancestor, you need to determine at least the country the ancestor lived in for an event such as birth, christening, marriage, or death. These suggestions may help you identify where your ancestor lived:

1. Start from what you know. If you are confident about where one ancestor lived, start with that ancestor and work back to the next generation. U.S. Censuses from 1850 on are a great place to start, as they contain birthplaces for everyone in the household. Federal Census documents from the 20th century also include immigration years. In earlier censuses, children's birthplaces and ages can give you an approximate immigration year. Keep going back through census years until you discover an ancestor born outside of the United States.

2. Search for birth details by checking cemeteries, obituaries, military records, immigration and naturalization documents and most importantly birth, marriage and death records for mention of a hometown or county. Use census discoveries to find immigration details in passenger lists. More recent lists may include a birthplace and the address of a close relative back home. Earlier lists can point you to friends and family from the same area who arrived on the same ship. Survey previous research, and see what others have listed. For example at FamilySearch™ your computer will search the Ancestral File, the International Genealogical Index, and other Web sites that may contain information about your ancestors.

3. Find a place where one or more members of the family lived, and look in the records of that place for members of the family. You may find parents living with a child, or you may find information about the parents in a child's record. Also look beyond traditional records. Church records can mention births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, hometowns and more. And an address from a census can lead you to nearby churches in city directories. Land records can help you pinpoint churches close to rural relatives. If you hit a “brick wall” research someone else. Records of an ancestor's sibling, cousin or parent could lead you to the hometown you're looking for.

4. If your ancestor immigrated to the United States and you are unsure of the country he or she came from, click Tracing Immigrant Ancestors.

Ancestral locations in central europe

In order to develop an understanding as to where our German, Austrian, and Swiss ancestors came from we need a more the basic understanding of the various places that existed in Central Europe during the 17^th to 20^th centuries. With the prominent exceptions of Britain and France the stability of the administrative regions of Europe have changed many times during the past 400 years. This is especially true with regard to the areas of modern day Germany and Austria.

For example, your family history states that your German-speaking ancestor came to America in 1910 from the village of Toblach in Austria. If you check the a list of cities and towns in Austria you won’t find Toblach. You may want to go further and check a database named Inhabited places of Austria but would still be unsuccessful. As a last resort you Google Toblach, Austria and only find a place named Toblach in Italy. Can this be the ancestral location you’re looking for? If you are aware that the boundaries of Austria were re-established in 1918 as the result of World War One you realize that further investigation is required if you are to verify that the Toblach in Italy is the village of your ancestor. Eventually you find that the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was the document that dissolved the Austro-Hungarian Empire and created the boundaries of the new Republic of Austria. One of the provisions in the treaty stated that the southern half of the former Tyrolean crownland, including predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol would become a part of Italy. Further checking shows that the Tolbach in Italy is in the province of South Tyrol.

As that aforementioned example illustrates that little knowledge about how and when the administrative divisions were changed greatly assist with finding and ancestral location in Central Europe. As such an awarenessof the following basic historical information about the Holy Roman, Austrian and German Empires can lay down a solid foundation for your further research.

From 962 to 1806 much of Central Europe was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. At its peak the core of The Holy Roman Empire lay in Austria and included territories of the Kingdom of Germany, Kingdom of Bohemia, Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Burgundy. For much of its history, the Empire consisted of hundreds of smaller sub-units, principalities, duchies, counties, Free Imperial Cities and other domains

The Austrian Empire centered on what is today's Austria. This administrative entity officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. At its height of power it spanned from present-day Italy to present-day Poland and to the Balkans. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of 1867 to 1918 comprised modern-day Austria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, large parts of Serbia and Romania and smaller parts of Italy, Montenegro, Poland and Ukraine.

During the 17^th century the area now known as Germany was divided politically into many locally governed principalities, free cities, duchies, and feudal kingdoms. By 1648 Germany, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire, was fractured during the Thirty Years War into more than 300 separate states. In 1701 the Kingdom of Prussia was established. Prussia would become the hub around which the many separate domains would merge to become Germany. During this time Prussia would be one of the primary member states of the German Confederation of 1815-1866, and the North German Confederation of 1866-1871 which became the German Empire of 1871-1918, and lastly the republic of Weimar Germany of 1919-1933 .From the 1871 unification of Germany to 1918, Prussia comprised almost two-thirds of the territory of the German Empire.

In addition to the specific resources listed below look at those cited within this webpage at Our Favorite Map & Atlas Pages, and Our Favorite Gazetteers. Here you will find additional resources that apply to the central European countries mentioned earlier.

Resources for finding Ancestral Locations in Central Europe

· List of states in the Holy Roman Empire

· Constituent lands of the Austrian Empire

· Lands connected to the Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary

· List of Provinces in the Kingdom of Prussia

· States of the German Confederation;

· States of the North German Confederation;

· States of the German Empire;

· States of Weimar Germany;

MAPPING THE ANCESTRAL LOCATION

Mapping the Ancestral Location

It is said that approximately 80% of all information has a locational element. When it comes to family history this rises to 100%. Ask yourself the question "what single fact connects every single event in every single family tree everywhere in the world?" Answer every event took place somewhere. This can be cemetery data, battle records, birth, marriage, work, census, parish, county, journey, disembarkation, hospitalization, incarceration (mental hospital and prison), disaster and criminal records. Any record, in fact, that has a locational element.

One can hardly conduct thorough, meaningful research on any family line without incorporating the use of maps in some significant way. Find maps online is easy and there is an abundance of them to use. Maps are such interesting and exciting sources of information, and come in so many varieties that their study and use could become an avocation in and of itself. This section of the web page will show you some mapping sites we like to use for genealogical research. We believe that all are useful in one's quest to discover early family origins.

Below are some examples of Maps, Gazetteers, and Other Helpful Resources for Researching Locations. These web sites comprise only a small portion of what is available for researchers interested in learning more about the areas in which their ancestors lived. If the list below doesn’t contain what you are looking for, we suggest you try Odden’s Bookmarks, which contains links to more than 10,000 cartographic sites.

OUR FAVORITE MAP & ATLAS PAGES

(For Locating Gen-Sites)

United Kingdom

· Street Map UK

· Ordnance Survey, Britain's mapping agency

· Ordnance Survey Open Data (UK)

· ScotlandsPlaces - use the mapping in the website to both define and refine your search.

· Old maps.com.uk

· Scotland 1747 to 1961- historic map overlays on a modern map base.

· England 1945 to 1947 - historic map overlays on a modern map base.

· Ireland 1940 to 1943 - historic map overlays on a modern map base.

· Great Britain 1881 to 1961 - historic map overlays on a modern map base.

World Locations

· Bing Maps (N.A., World, Europe) (good for copies)

· MSRMaps

· Mapquest – World Locations

· MSN Maps (N.A., World, Europe)

· Google Earth

· Maps – Family Search Research Help

· Ancestry.com - Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers $

· United Nations—Cartographic Section

· Panoramic Maps Collection (Library of Congress)

· Perry Castaneda Library Map Collection

· David Rumsey Map Collection

· The American Geographical Society Library

· Library of Congress (Geography & Map Collection)

· World Fact Book – Map Index

Central European Countries

· Maps of Inhabited Places in Austria

· An Atlas of The German Empire (1883) – Search the gazetteer, for a town or village to find reference to a map section that can be used to narrow the search down to a single section of the large complex map.

· Topographic Maps of Germany – pre World War II

· German Empire 1870

· German Empire 1917

· Central & Eastern European Map Library – mostly late 19^th and early 20^th century maps.

U.S.A.

· National Atlas of the United States

· Township and Range Search By Description

· Historic Topographic Map Collection - USGS

· Wikimedia Atlas of the United States

· Free Topographic Maps – USA, States & Counties

· U.S. Digital Map Project - USGenweb

U.S.A. Historical Maps & Atlases

U.S. County Formation Maps

· U.S., County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918 $

· 1795 Carey's American Atlas

· Carey's 1814 General Atlas

· 1836 New Universal Atlas

· Morse's 1845 North American Atlas

· 1895 U.S. Atlas

· U.S. History Maps (Wikimedia)

North America

· Bing Maps (N.A., World, Europe) (good for copies)

· Acme Mapper 2.0 (good for coordinates)

· OpenStreetMap

· Mapquest – US & Canada Locations

· TopoQuest - Topographic Maps Online

· Anyplace America. Free Topographic Maps!

· National Atlas of Canada – About 350,000 Canadian place names, including English, French, and Indian variants.

Western European Countries

· Belgium 1937 to 1944 - maps as overlays on a modern map base.

OUR FAVORITE GAZETTEERS

Our Favorite Gazetteers

(For Locating Gen-Sites)

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names (see: toponymy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas.^[1] It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social statistics and physical features, such as mountains, waterways, or roads.

Family historians encounter many place names that were once important to the family being researched. Over the centuries, names of provinces, counties, districts, towns, rivers, and even mountains may have changed. As such knowing the current spelling and location of a place will be of great assistance to any genealogist. Numerous gazetteers about the United States as well as other countries of the World are accessible online. Therefore we suggested that you make use of the following website-links if you are looking for a village, fort, church, creek, lake, mountain, or any other place you may come upon during your family research.

Standard Finder can be of assistance to researchers

in determining proper

spellings of locations and,

checking if locations exist

as well as determining alternate name spellings will expand

your research opportunities.

Austria

Germany

For more on this topic, see Germany in our “Internet Resources” section.

· Directory of Cities, Towns, & Regions in Germany

· List of places in Germany

· East and West Prussia Gazetteer

· Lists of German communities by state & county

· German & Polish place names - Index contains Polish and previous German names of localities situated in Poland and Russia. Also some names of places from former Saxony now in Poland and Silesian now in Germany.

· German Gazetteers - ProGenealogists

· German Empire Gazetteer - Names of 3365 places. Because many village names were “Germanized” in East-Prussia the new name is after a slash. The Polish, Russian Cyrillic and Lithuanian equivalents are shown in a separate column.

· An Atlas of The German Empire (1883) – Search the gazetteer, for a town or village to find reference to a map section that can be used to narrow the search down to a single section of the large complex map.

· Kartenmeister – This database contains 92919 locations with over 38,691 name changes once, and 5,500 twice and more. All locations are east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and are based on the borders in 1918. Included in this database are the following provinces: East Prussia, including Memel, West Prussia, Brandenburg, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia.

· Hannover Gemeinde Index - Covers Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, called "Hannover") Braunschweig (Brunswick), Schamburg-Lippe and Oldenburg.

· Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire $ - The gazetteer to use to locate place names in German research. It was originally compiled in 1912 (pre World War One). Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, villages, etc.

United Kingdom

For more on this topic, see United Kingdom in our “Internet Resources” section.

· List of places in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

· Directory of Cities and Towns in United Kingdom

· Old Maps,com.UK Gazetteer - Selecting a place from counties as they were back in the mid 19th century will show the historical map for that area.

· Gazetteer of British Place Names – 50,000 entries that includes the historic county as well as modern administrative districts to determine what county each place was originally in, and where records might be found today.

· A Topographical Dictionary of England - Contains detailed topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England.

· GENUKI Church Gazetteer – This database contains the approximate location of the parishes that existed around 1837.

· GENUKI 1891 Census Gazetteer

This database contains the names of places encountered in the 1891 census for England, Wales and the Isle of Man.

· Registration Districts: England & Wales (1837–1974)

These pages show composition of the civil registration districts. There is also an Alphabetical List of Districts and an Index of Place Names for the whole of England and Wales.

· List of Places in England

· List of places in Northern Ireland

· Gazetteer for Scotland

· A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland - Contains detailed topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England.

· List of Places in Scotland

· ScotlandsPlaces - enter a place name or a coordinate to search across different national databases.

· Scottish Post Office Directories - 694 directories for the period 1773 to 1911, covering 28 towns and counties.

· Scotland Gazetteer - searchable, historical database of towns & cities

· List of Places in Wales

Ireland

· The Ireland Atlas / Database

· A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland

· Directory of Cities, Towns, and Regions in Ireland

Czech Republic

· German names of villages now in the Czech Republic

· Czech to German designation place names

· German Place Names: Bohemia & Moravia (1938-45)

· Lexicon of villages in north and northwest Bohemia

· German names of Czech Municipalities - This list is used to navigate in the ancient written sources, maps, etc.

United States

For more on this topic, see United States in our “Internet Resources” section.

· U.S. & Territories (USGS-GNIS Place Name Search)

· This site allows you to search among over 2 million place names.

· List of cities, towns, villages in the U.S. - Wikipedia

· Directory of Cities, Towns, in United States

· U.S. Gazetteer 1990 to Present (Census Bureau)

· US Cities & State Gazetteers (US Home Town Locator)

· Geographic Reference Library – Ancestry.com

· Our Gazetteer of U.S. Physical, Cultural & Historical Features

World

For more on this topic, see World in our “Internet Resources” section.

· Geographical Names – an extremely comprehensive source by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, MD, USA

· Gazetteer of Historical European Places - This gazetteer will assist with accessing additional information about the places cited within Rietstap’s Armorial General.

· Standard Finder is a FamilySearch Labs application which provides access to standardized information for names, locations, and dates.

· The Fuzzy Gazetteer - Search over 7,000,000 place names using a phonetic transcription of the place. The search is spelling tolerant, with more emphasis on the vowels. This site can be helpful when tracing obsolete or misspelled places.

· Directory of Cities and Towns in World

· Foreign Place Names Search (USGS-GNIS)

· Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

· A Dictionary, Geographical, Statistical, & Historical

Volume 1: AA - Caspe

Volume 2: Caspian Sea - Iona

Volume 3: Ionian Islands - Poole

Volume 4: Poonah – Zytomiers

· JewishGen Gazetteer - is a database containing the names of all localities in the 54 countries of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

· General Reference Library - Geography

France

For more on this topic, see France in our “Internet Resources” section.

· Administrative divisions of France

· Directory of Cities, Towns, and Regions in France

· Dictionnaire des Postes aux Lettres – A gazetteer, published in 1754, of post offices in France and Belgium.

· A Gazetteer of France: Volume 1 (A-F), 1793

· A Gazetteer of France: Volume 2, (G-P),1793

· A Gazetteer of France: Volume 3, (Q-Z),1793

Switzerland

For more on this topic, see Switzerland in our “Internet Resources” section.

· Directory of Cities, Towns, & Regions in Switzerland

· Cantons of Switzerland

· List of places in Switzerland

· Municipalties of Canton Berne

Baltic Countries

· Dictionary of Estonian Place names* – Search by place name, name variant, type and location, parish, and manor. *written in Estonian

Researching Countries

Researching
Countries
of the World

If you are attempting to perform research on ancestors from countries other that the United States or Europe you should consider starting at this website that is sponsored by Family Search. This Wiki offers Free family history research advice for genealogy research by family historians, like yourself. Here you can learn from over 37,440 articles about how to research in every corner of the world. From the list below, click on a country of your choice. Within the countries, information is arranged by topic. You can learn about important record types, research methods, and repositories, And this free online source is up to date with most current websites and new of record availability.

Antigua and Barbuda