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Post by dreamingsarah on Jan 9, 2016 2:08:20 GMT -5
Thanks twoj! I'm currently sorting through everything I have and trying to process how to get all of it and what I need- will email you back soon! I do have one question for right now: I found out my great-great grandmother, Clementine Hoffmann, died in Trier, Germany in the 50's. I will probably need her death certificate, right? How would I even go about getting that? I've been trying to google which office I'd contact about this, but I'm coming up empty-handed. |
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Post by twoj on Jan 9, 2016 11:21:08 GMT -5
Thanks twoj ! I'm currently sorting through everything I have and trying to process how to get all of it and what I need- will email you back soon! I do have one question for right now: I found out my great-great grandmother, Clementine Hoffmann, died in Trier, Germany in the 50's. I will probably need her death certificate, right? How would I even go about getting that? I've been trying to google which office I'd contact about this, but I'm coming up empty-handed. Hi Sarah
I understand, its a lot of work to get all the certificates. If she died in Trier, Germany, the page for the request of civil documents is here; www.trier.de/icc/internet_de/nav/fd7/fd71028c-ac0d-1f31-04fd-5b70a348b027&sel_uCon=44f70db4-7624-6e31-57d5-d3843d761716&uTem=63f7089a-29fc-6c31-e777-d8b132ead2aa.htm
My experience in getting 2 certs from Germany was that they were the most difficult to get, its unlikely the person will speak anything other than German, so communicating could be an issue. For one cert from Bonn, Germany they requested a 25Euro deposit only by Bank transfer that has a special code in the bank transfer. While this may be easy and common in the Euro region, in Canada and I believe the States doing a wire transfer can be quite expensive, more than the 25Euro cost, not to mention this special code is not a typical field of a bank-to-bank transfer (not to mention they send the information by snail mail and the information they sent had an error in the bank transfer information!!!!!). In truth my $25 Euro is still sitting in limbo in the Bonn coffers because I got so fed up with trying to deal with the 'only' person who works in the Bonn 'Standesamt' (Registry Office) after she sent me a politically correct nasty letter. I digress.
I ended up using the service of; www.germany-service.com/ Edeltraud (the owner) was good about getting the documents - it is a bit pricy $75USD but she takes paypal and there is tracking. I needed 3 copies of each cert so she charged $75 for the first and $35 for subsequent copies, so each group of certs was about $140USD - pricy but after the headaches and time of trying to go through the official channel I should have done it this way right from the beginning.
So my advise would be to find out if you need any other certs from Germany and go through her service to get all of them. Trier might be able to send them for free so I guess its worth asking them what the process is. If you don't speak German it might help to find someone who does that can communicate with them.
So that's my $0.02
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Post by William on Jan 29, 2016 21:56:15 GMT -5
Hi Guys,
I am posting this a little discouraged actually. I have know that my great grandmother was born in Luxembourg for years and years. Its always been a dream of mine to become a citizen again someday. I have been diligently working on gaining information and have been emailing back and forth with the Lux National Archives. They found apparently what I believe is her birth certificate. Its her exact name on it and the month and year, October 1899. BUT the date is two days off. It says the 14th instead of the 12th which is on pretty much every other record that I have of her. They told me if I found her marriage record that I should be able to verify her father and her mothers name, which are on the birth certificate. She was married in Texas in 1924 and according to a lot of people, they didn't include the names of parents often on the marriage license back than. If so, what would I do? How would I be able to verify that she is my great grandmother. It would be absolutely devastating if I came this far and because of improper book keeping, I wouldn't be able to get it. Please any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
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Post by twoj on Jan 30, 2016 10:18:29 GMT -5
Hi William
I can imagine it is frustrating, but there is possibly other support documents that can help. First I think it would be good to get the marriage certificate to see whether the parents names are recorded there - if they are then it sounds like your issue is resolved. If not you might want to check to see if your g-gm was baptized - usually those records will include the date of birth and the parents names. Next I can think of is some sort of travel documentation, stating that Miss XYZ left Europe by boat to City, State, USA, these types of records don't usually have much info, but every bit helps build a case. Next did she become an American citizen, in which case I guess there is some information she had to give, which I would think would include her parents names. You also might want to check her obituary records that might record her parents, you might also want to look in the Luxembourg online newspaper archive for that date she died and see if there is any obituaries put in there for family still there.
Actually first of all - now that I think of it - if she was born in 1899 the original birth record I would guess is in German, I don't know if you have seen the record or it is just them tell you the date, but I have seen where the official birth certificate is recorded the REGISTERED date which will say that the person was born 1 or 2 days before. So it could be just that they gave you the date the birth was registered but her actual birth was 2 days prior. That was not uncommon at that time. You will need to see the original and see what it says. My German isn't great but if you want to send me her birth certificate I should be able to see more-or-less what it says, or if you have her name and details you can look it up in the familysearch online database.
Anyway I wouldn't be too discouraged at this point, there seems a few more avenues to try.
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