The principal presenter for the June 30, 2019, meeting at the Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was Dr. Michael D. Lacopo. He had been speaking around the country for three weeks when he landed in Pittsburgh but was well-prepared with lots of visuals and a list of credentials a mile long. His studies go back nearly 40 years.

Dr. Lacopo warned us from the beginning that researching our German ancestors can be “insanely difficult,” for several reasons.

Dr. Lacopo specializes in pre-1850 research centering around Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest. Proficient in reading old German script, he reached across the ocean to Switzerland and Germany, fascinating the audience with his computer.

First, “There never was a ‘Germany.’” The United States is 28 times the size of modern Germany, yet over the millennia there have been hundreds of political configurations in that part of the world. Therefore, we should refer to our ancestors as “German-speaking people,” taking into consideration parts of Switzerland, France, Poland, and more.

Although the first Germanic tradesmen came to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608 as glassmakers and carpenters, we probably most remember Daniel Pastorius, who founded Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683. Our German-speaking ancestors likely came to Pennsylvania in two waves, beginning in 1709 and slowing by the end of of the nineteenth century. By the time of the American Revolution, there were about 250,000 in the Colonies with half of them in Pennsylvania. At the start of the twentieth century, German immigrants totaled nearly five million.

The essence of the workshop involved the many curious research questions and strong teaching points forwarded by Dr. Lacopo:

• Whom are you looking for; a surname will do. Where did they live, work, and attend church?
• Has someone else already done your work? Leave no stone unturned. Do not re-invent the wheel. Primary documents are best, but secondary sources like indexes will help.
• Do “cluster genealogy” looking for “chain migrations” and what he called “fan clubs.” In other words, immigrants traveled in groups from families and villages. Lacopo stated, “Our ancestors did NOT live in a bubble.” Yet not all Germans have the same culture. He calls for “Big Picture Research.” Get to know the names and origins of relatives, friends, and associates. Most immigrants had duel identities—yes, they often came as families, but they probably went to church as a community. Some worked off the farm and even formed social clubs. Look in all those records.

Surely, the two most interesting aspects of Dr. Lacopo’s presentation were his use of computer software applications and how he became fluent enough in German to build a family profile. A concept he calls “surname mapping” by Christoph.Stoepel/Geogen will show “hot spots” of last names in Western Europe. From there you might circle out looking for those names in church and public records.

How does one read the language, especially the old script? Lacopo began by learning a few basic German words. He would compose his weekly shopping list and even write simple letters to fellow genealogists in German. Any new language takes practice. Of course, Google can translate back and forth now between the languages. Using smart phones today, one can actually take a picture of a page in German and have it translated. Facebook has a similar service.

Unfortunately, during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) many German towns and documents were destroyed. The persecution of our Anabaptist ancestors by the church-state in Europe discouraged the Amish-Mennonite churches from keeping records. The beginning of the World Wars in the twentieth century (1914 and 1941) instigated anti-German fervor in heritage research. Fortunately, our twenty-first-century technology can find and interpret those long-lost archival treasures.

Dr. Lacopo challenged his audience to not just be “BMD Genealogists”—satisfied with only birth, marriage, and death dates. Using our computers and smart phones and the myriad of research applications, we can find the roots of our “Sauerkraut Yankees” without having to cross the Atlantic—unless you want to!

Surely, the most interesting aspect of researching family ancestry, according to Wikipedia, is the story of “ordinary people coping with life.”

The following short alphabetical list from the seminar contains just a few electronic sources, usually with translations available, for German-Americans to begin their research:

• ARCHION.DE – is called “the premiere site for digitized German church records.” Unfortunately, a membership fee is necessary to use it.
• CHRISTOPH.STOEPEL.NET/GEOGEN – displays the location of surnames that are unique or geographically limited.
• FAMILYSEARCH.ORG – is a free multi-faceted site, starting with a tour, an indexing service, and even an online dictionary, up-to-date and easy to use.
• FAMLIT.GENEALOGY.NET – is a bank of periodicals on most any subject dealing with specific families.
• GENEALOGER.COM – offers a bibliography and other services on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arrivals to America.
• HEINZHISTORYCENTER.ORG/DETRE-LIBRARY-ARCHIVES – includes German-language newspapers, church records, societies, family papers, and more.
• JSTOR.ORG – provides full text searches of 10 million academic journals, 50,000 books, and 2 million primary source documents.
• PFALZGESCHICHTE.DE – is the site of the Institute for Palatinate History and Folklife Studies, referencing some 600,000 emigrants.
• WIKI-DE.GENEALOGY.NET/KATEGORIE:ORTSFAMILIENBUCH – or “book of family place names,” might suggest where to look for church, civic, and other public records.