To recap: So far we've looked at actual books on shelves in an honored genealogy research library - the Los Angeles Public Library - for biographies and other information about the surname immigrant German-Prussian family in the city and county where they were found on the 1860 United States Census. The potential was there to be lead to important family members, perhaps participants in local history, to the ownership of land or businesses, as well as on those German - Prussians who came to America on sail ships.
We've looked at the United States census focusing on the County and City that family lived in 1850 and expanded out to other nearby counties in Eastern Pennsylvania.
We've looked at maps and land and property records,and the history of the area when it comes to waves of German Immigration. We are pretty sure this family came with the Second Wave of Immigrants who brought crafts and skills and were not land owning farmers.
We went back to Pre and Revolutionary War times and forward to the Civil War and there is some evidence that men with the same surname served but they cannot be linked to the immigrant nuclear family. If we do send money to the Pennsylvania Archive it may be speculative. We might find the name of a town in Prussia that is the origin of that soldier but that might now be a family member.
We went on a foray into Old German language newspapers on databases and got frustrated.
There is evidence of the surname in other counties in Eastern Pennsylvania but not connections to that immigrant nuclear family. There is no record of them being in the country earlier. What is next?
Step Eleven: Ship records for Sail Ships coming into Philadelphia or New York.
Sadly, these records are notoriously spotty. If this were an immigrant family who came through during the steamship era, this search would be a priority because of all the information collected on ship manifests.
There were some index type cards that might again be of members of an extended family but not the names on that 1850 census, and with near no information. A lot of people over many years have devoted themselves to these records, finding them and adding them to databases and so on. While there is always the possibility of more being found, nudda.
Back at Los Angeles Public Library I checked all their books (information that links to databases now) and found nothing new... but just in case there had been some indexing error...
Posts in this series will be brought up using the label PA-GERM research path
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