By William F. Hoffman and Jonathan D. Shea

This 665-page work is designed to help genealogical researchers find and understand German-language records that will tell them about the lives of their ancestors and relatives. The book’s features include:

* 25 documents drawn up in America and 70 drawn up in Europe, reproduced, analyzed, and translated, most with the handwritten parts repeated in modern Roman-style typeface to facilitate comparison. The sample documents include numerous formats of birth, marriage, and death records, as well as a variety of other documents that may provide genealogical information.

* an 80-page chapter on using gazetteers and other sources to help locate ancestral towns and villages, as well as contact information for state and regional archives in countries where large numbers of Germans lived (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Luxemburg, Poland, and Switzerland), including maps showing the modern administrative divisions of those countries.

* a German letter-writing guide, to help you write to archives in German-speaking lands.

* a 210-page vocabulary section, emphasizing archaic terms seen in old records. Every German word is given in Fraktur, the old Gothic blackletter typeface; Kurrentschrift, the old German handwriting; and modern italics, to help you get used to dealing with those old forms and recognize them more easily.

* a 32-page chapter listing common German given names and their equivalents in other European languages.

* a 19-page index designed to help you find information on any subject covered within the book.

ISBN: 978-0-9985857-0-3

Size: 8.5 x 11”. Pages: x + 655.