Lecture descriptions Suzanne M. Trotter, FEEFHS 2021

[Scroll down to see all lectures taught by this presenter during this conference]

I have a place name! Now what? Identifying Place Names in the lands of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (Austro-Hungarian track)

As with most European research, records in the Austrian and Hungarian lands were kept at the town level. This means that we have to identify a town in order to really be sure we’ve found the correct family. However, in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, having a town name may not be enough because each ethnicity called the town a different name. When the Austrian Empire took over, they imposed German names on all towns. The same occurred for Hungarian. But if your ancestor was a non-German, non-Hungarian, living in a town here, they called it by their own ethnic variation.

Early German Immigration—Where they came from, where they settled, and when they migrated (German track)

Mass migration out of the Palatinate region of Germany began in 1708. By June 1709, thousands of Palatines flooded both Rotterdam and London. In fall 1709, 11 ships were loaded full of these immigrants to be sent to America. These ships sat in the harbor through the winter. When they finally sailed in spring 1710, these ships went to Ireland, New York, and North Carolina. At least one ship also went to Pennsylvania. The bulk of these emigrants in 1710 did NOT go to Pennsylvania.

Working in Records Containing Mixed Languages (Resources track)

Reading records is not always as simple as identifying the language being used by the record keeper. Sometimes, it requires understanding 2-3 languages and how they are woven together into a single record.