During one of my forays into tracing an ancestor, I went to a famous art library which happens to have some excellent genealogy resources. Based on a translation, I wanted books about one of the "German Towns" in a country outside Germany.
For those of you who don't know, Germans migrated out of Germany for hundreds of years with the understanding that they would always be Germans and welcomed back.
There were rather strict rules about who inherited the family farm, usually the youngest son who would also stay to take care of his elderly parents. As families were generally large there were many Germans who left what would become unified nation-states and became Germany to go to other countries to establish life there based in economic need. Generally Germans were welcome in other countries, including the United States, and were invited to settle because they were thought to be industrious.
So I began to page through the books looking at old black and white photos of these settlements. Then as I turned the page of a particular book and saw the photo of a large building and a road going past it, I was struck with a shiver of recognition. None of the other photographs I saw had this effect on me.
These shivers I call Truth Shivers. Be it remembering a place from a dream (which might mean having seen it before) or a past life, the shiver made me focus on the time and place of the photo. Was this perhaps the place to next look for the ancestor who was listed on a marriage document as having come from a place with this name.
Forward several years later, I learned that the translation was correct but that another place in another country (much closer to the place the person lived for many years hence) was ALSO given this name. I know that the names of places often come from where the residents left or lived prior to moving. In the United States many settlements are named after places in England, for instance.
Unable to yet establish the person's link with BOTH places, I've let this one rest. Maybe synchronicity will bring the answer.
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