Keep Dreaming
Posted by David | Filed under genealogy
Genea-Musings’ latest SNGF asks which databases we’d like to see made available online. In that post, Randy mentions that he’d like to see probate indexes and files, regardless of locality, digitized and indexed.
John at TransylvanianDutch writes that he’d like to see complete databases for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Globe-Democrat.
All three of those ideas would be toward the top of my own list, so I’m really going to shoot for the moon with my wishes.
1. I’d like for the church records from the Osnabrück area in Germany to be put online. Even an index to the records would be helpful. (Frankly, I’m settle for a paper copy of each church’s index.) Seven of my thirty-two 3rd great-grandparents were from the area roughly between Bramsche and Buer. That’s 22% of my ancestry.
What makes this subject somewhat frustrating is that another five 3rd great-grandparents were also from this general area, in most of the cases just a short distance south of Osnabrück, and their church records are readily available from the Family History Library. But cross that border from Westphalia into Osnabrück and the availability of records is, at best, hit and miss.
I understand that the churches and archives are protective of this information and the records, but it’s 2010. Let’s at least work towards helping researchers find clues. I can be as big of a cheapskate as the next person, but I’d gladly spend money for certain indexes, copies of records or to hire someone in Germany when I know results are there to be had.
2. Any databases that tell me which towns Ferdinand EBERT and John HEATON were from.
