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Post by dreamingsarah on Nov 1, 2015 1:49:40 GMT -5
Hi everyone! I am a US citizen trying to figure out if I qualify for recovering Luxembourgish citizenship. My grandmother was born in Luxembourg in 1924 and immigrated after the war. I just found out about the ability to recover citizenship and I am excited, but a little confused. Can anyone help with the following?
- As stated, my grandmother was born in Luxembourg in 1924. I have read a couple of different translations of how this whole thing works, and I can't quite tell if you have to prove that your direct ancestor was alive and in Luxembourg in the year 1900, or if it is 1900 OR LATER. Could someone clarify?
- IIRC my (now deceased) grandmother had said she was born in Differdange. I am fairly certain she also got married while she was in Luxembourg, but I have no clue where she might have been when she was married. Any thoughts on where to start?
- I don't have my grandmother's parents' names (she died several years ago, I am trying to make some calls to see about finding it) so I thought I'd scour the internet to see if I could find any information about her birth but I'm definitely coming up empty-handed. I found the archive of birth, marriage, and death certificates online that were scanned, but they only run through 1923 so there is no useful information for me. Any ideas?
Thanks so much! My husband and I have often talked of moving over there and if citizenship is not as big of an issue then it might really become a reality which is so exciting!
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Post by moike92 on Nov 1, 2015 2:03:14 GMT -5
Well the ancestor has to have been born before or on the date of 1 Jan 1900. But chances are that your grandmothers parents or at least one of them was a Luxembourger. So you would just need to find information on one of them and you could be ok,
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Post by moike92 on Nov 1, 2015 2:35:08 GMT -5
We also have a Facebook group for this that a lot of people use and many questions have been answered on there as well. Plus I believe it is a little quicker to get a response that way since everyone gets notified when someone posts on there. If you would like to join it just search for " Luxembourg Citizenship" on Facebook and it should be the first one to come up in the search. It will start with " re-aquistion ". I do understand as well how difficult it is to try and use searches to find family documents and information on the internet. I was unable to find anything relating to my family that way. On the other hand I was lucky enough that my family stayed connected with friends and relatives in Luxembourg so my grandfather already had all the information that I needed to find and request for birth, marriage, and death certificates. Don't let it get to you though, because essentially the first phase is the hardest part of the whole process and took quite a bit of time for everyone. Just be patient and as long as you are determined to do this process everything will most definitely work in your favor! Good luck!
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Post by dreamingsarah on Nov 1, 2015 13:47:13 GMT -5
Well the ancestor has to have been born before or on the date of 1 Jan 1900. But chances are that your grandmothers parents or at least one of them was a Luxembourger. So you would just need to find information on one of them and you could be ok, This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for, thanks! I don't know for certain if I'd qualify because I have so little information at this point. I think her father was from Belgium (she always spoke of visiting a red-headed grandmother she despised in Belgium, haha) and her maiden name is Belgian, I think. Definitely requires more research. |
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Post by dreamingsarah on Nov 1, 2015 14:48:04 GMT -5
We also have a Facebook group for this that a lot of people use and many questions have been answered on there as well. Plus I believe it is a little quicker to get a response that way since everyone gets notified when someone posts on there. If you would like to join it just search for " Luxembourg Citizenship" on Facebook and it should be the first one to come up in the search. It will start with " re-aquistion ". I do understand as well how difficult it is to try and use searches to find family documents and information on the internet. I was unable to find anything relating to my family that way. On the other hand I was lucky enough that my family stayed connected with friends and relatives in Luxembourg so my grandfather already had all the information that I needed to find and request for birth, marriage, and death certificates. Don't let it get to you though, because essentially the first phase is the hardest part of the whole process and took quite a bit of time for everyone. Just be patient and as long as you are determined to do this process everything will most definitely work in your favor! Good luck! I am searching for the FB group but coming up totally empty. Nothing comes up when I search for "Luxembourg Citizenship" or "Re-aquisition Luxembourg". |
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Post by helena on Nov 2, 2015 0:10:22 GMT -5
I cannot copy and paste on this forum. But, you can search the forum, and you'll find acthread called "facebook group." A post in that thread has the link to the FB page.
You can search Deltgen.com to see if you can find information about your grandmother's birth there.
Some marriage licenses or certificates list parent's names. Her obituary may list them.
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Post by helena on Nov 2, 2015 0:18:53 GMT -5
Familysearch.org is also helpful. It has documents from around the world online, at least some documents. You can't just type a name into search, though. Often, you have to go page by page (written in the native language) to find what you want. Ask an employee there, and they can tell you how to find what you want, if it's there.
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Post by dreamingsarah on Nov 2, 2015 0:53:27 GMT -5
I cannot copy and paste on this forum. But, you can search the forum, and you'll find acthread called "facebook group." A post in that thread has the link to the FB page. You can search Deltgen.com to see if you can find information about your grandmother's birth there. Some marriage licenses or certificates list parent's names. Her obituary may list them. Thanks for the info! I will definitely check into that. I was able to pry some additional information out of my mother (who is a lot less eager about this than I am and hasn't been so forthcoming with information.) She took a photo of my grandmother's marriage certificate so I was able to grab her parents' names off of that, and she said my great-grandmother was probably born in Luxembourg but my great-grandfather was born in France, so that's a little more to go off of! I was also able to find out that my grandmother was born and married in Differdange so I know where I need to go for those records now. Has anyone else dug up some weird family stuff as a result of this? I found out that my grandparents were married under a different last name, then changed their last name to what I now know as my mother's maiden name. I could have ended up in totally the wrong direction without knowing that!!!!  |
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Post by dreamingsarah on Nov 4, 2015 12:24:29 GMT -5
All right guys...I have another question: Is anyone good at reading and translating these documents?
My situation as of now is- I was able to go back and find my great-grandparents' records, but my great-grandfather was born in France and my great-grandmother was born in Luxembourg...but in 1904! I am attempting to go back one more generation on her side to see if either of those folks were born in Luxembourg, but no one in my family really has any information about these people.
I found my great-grandmother's birth certificate and am attempting to see if there's any useful information at all besides her parents' names on there (maybe where they're from?) However, the handwriting is challenging to read and I'm even not coming up with very much useful stuff by plugging in the printed text into a translator. Knowing the layout of the form and what information is where would be helpful to deciphering this document.
I would be glad to post the document in question if anyone wants to take a stab at it or provide some assistance (which would be greatly appreciated. I'll buy you a drink in Luxembourg to say thanks!)
Great-grandmother was born in Dudelange and I have scoured marriage records +/- 15 years from her birth to find her parents and am coming up empty-handed, so I'm trying to figure out where they were from. I checked most of the marriage records from neighboring villages and didn't find anything as well. I was told she was from a large family, so I checked additional birth records and I found some people with the same last name, but different parents listed. However, one record I found actually references her name on it but it was only within a couple years of her birth (maybe it was a child of one of her older siblings? Just a guess...it's hard to tell without knowing what's on the form.)
One more question: I'm assuming this will be okay, but I noticed an inconsistency between my great-grandmother's birth and marriage records. Her marriage record has her first name as "Catherine" (and I was told her name was Catherine) but her birth record lists her as "Katherina". I'm certain it's her because her parents' names are the same on both documents, though, and the birth dates match. She was apparently illiterate so maybe she just didn't know, or didn't like her birth name. Would this be an issue during application?
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Post by twoj on Nov 4, 2015 16:08:01 GMT -5
if you want to send me the information you have i'll see what I can find - I've been doing my ancestory in Luxembourg for a little while now - which is how I found out about reclaiming the citizenship.
I'm also a member of luxroots.com which is a great resource in finding ancestors in Luxembourg prior to 1920ish, and so I have been going through birth/marriage/death certificates - not the easiest handwriting!
Don't worry about the first name, its not unusual that there are slight changes in the first name since a lot of times the record was written by someone else , whom depending if they were writing in French / German, or even Latin. I have a relative that started Petrus (Latin), married as Pierre (French) and died as Peter (German), so as long as the family name is pretty much the same I wouldn't worry between Catherine and Katherina.
My email is doublejcream@gmail.com
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Post by heatherk on Nov 9, 2015 13:49:17 GMT -5
I had a lot of luck with Ancestry. I just gathered as much information as I could before I paid for an account, set aside a month where I wouldn't have as much other stuff to work on, and plugged in all the information I already had. I then used their "hints" to flesh out the portion of my tree that I was interested in.
With a paid subscription you can view copies of the certificates, census records, etc. and even save them as PDFs or print them. They're not official copies so you can't just print those and stick them in your application, but it does help confirm names/dates/etc. so you know that you have the exact information before you order your documents. I saved all the relevant stuff as PDFs and cancelled my subscription after a month. I can still view my tree for the names and dates with a free account, and I still have the documents to refer back to.
The certificates from Luxembourg, etc - mine are nearly impossible to read as well (and I can read German and French), but I requested the right documents, so I am trusting the people in Dalheim can read them and found the right records for me. The dates match (that's the "im Jahre x, der Monat x" at the beginning), and a more French sounding version of my ancestors' names are on the documents, even though I can't understand most of the text due to the difficult to read handwriting.
I'll post a "decoded" Luxembourg birth certificate in our Facebook group for you (https://www.facebook.com/groups/luxembourgcitizenship/?fref=nf)
I also have a marriage certificate I could take a photo of sometime if that's useful to anyone and decode.
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Post by twoj on Nov 9, 2015 19:28:34 GMT -5
I've being trying to help dreamingsarah, I have a membership with Ancestory and I have run the people we know about through it but it hasn't turned up anything useful. I have never found Ancestory very good for European information, with the exception of the UK and Ireland, Ancestory is a very anglo-oriented site. Once you are in French or Germanic there are more specific websites that seem to be much more useful. I use Luxroots.com for Luxembourg information.
The reading of the certificates is a bit secondary at this point since dreamingsarah is missing the vital link of getting a confirmed Luxembourg citizen alive in 1900. We have found people but are having a hard time establishing the connection to prove a Luxembourg ancestor.
The great-great grandmother seems not to have a traceable birth or marriage certificate, if someone else has some ideas I would very happy to hear about it so that we can help dreamingsarah see if she is eligible.
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Post by moike92 on Nov 10, 2015 1:57:53 GMT -5
I actually found more information from Ancestry than anything else. Luxroots.com provided absolutely no information for me. I tried many searches for many different ancestors and no records ever came up. Luckily my grandfather stayed in touch with our luxembourg relatives and they actually sent him al of the information that I needed to request everyone of my documents. So I didn't actually need to use any online websites.
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Post by twoj on Nov 10, 2015 13:23:24 GMT -5
Different experiences - mine was the opposite - it is somewhat odd since what they (luxroots) have is more or less the index of the FamilySearch records, and if your relatives aren't in the FamilySearch records which are more or less the official Luxembourg civil records then you have a problem. What I have noticed is that sometimes there are spelling mistakes, and mostly on the original records not because they were transcribed incorrectly. The records may transcribe how it was written but that is not always how you think it is spelled;
A perfect example is dreamingsarah, her relative SCHAEFFER was in another document with the spelling SCHÄFER, I know Ancestory is better at finding these spelling differences but from my experience they just don't have as much content as luxroots or some other websites.
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Post by moike92 on Nov 10, 2015 14:48:26 GMT -5
I tried several variations of the names and nothing ever came up. Even tried looking through all the records for each town, village, etc. Either way, I'm past that phase so luckily everything I already had worked out. Wish you guys luck in finding your documents  |
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