My great-grandfather, Julius Kirmse. immigrated to Perry County, Missouri, USA from the village of Fichtenhainichen in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg which is a part of present-day Altenburger Land, Thuringia. The purpose of this family research project is to learn about Julius Kirmse’s relatives in Saxe-Altenburg.
Background
When I retired from the University of Florida in 2003, I began genealogy research as a hobby. I had an interest in family history from my teenage years when my grandmother and grandfather Kirmse had told me stories about themselves and their ancestors. Since then, I had been a gatherer of family history information but had not seriously done genealogy research.
The first ancestor that I chose to study was my great-grandfather, Julius Kirmse. My second cousin, Helen (Kirmse) Hacker had shared copies of several documents and pictures of the Julius Kirmse family that she and her two cousins – my aunt Norma (Kirmse) Rauh and my father Julius Henry Kirmse – had gathered during the 1970s and 1980s. Among the items was a copy of Julius Kirmse’s emigration permission document and several family group sheets.
Using the information that Julius Kirmse had emigrated from Fichtenhainichen in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, I researched the available microfilm copies of the Rositz parish church records. Many hours were spent at the LDS Family History Center learning to transcribe and translate the German microfilmed scripts for family data. In September, I visited Helen and obtained many more pictures and documents. And, over the Christmas Holidays, I visited my cousin, Kathy (Rauh) Earnest, and scanned/digitized many of the boxes of documents that her mother, Norma (Kirmse) Rauh, had gathered. Among the items was the report that Jeffery-Bernhard Lensman had sent to Norma (Kirmse) Rauh in response to her request to search for information on the Kirmse family in the Rositz parish. I was delighted that a professional genealogist had found what I had found. However, I was not able to go beyond these findings – essentially I had hit the proverbial brick wall. So I went on to research other branches of my family tree.
Recently, 23AndMe DNA predicted that Peter Kowalski was a 3rd to 4th cousin. In November 2018, Peter and I began correspondence trying to determine how our family trees might be connected. The maiden names of one of each of our great-great grandmothers was Kratsch. Neither Peter nor I had much information on our respective great-great grandmothers. This appeared to be a good beginning point for looking for a relationship between the two of us.
Genealogy research tools and databases have changed dramatically over the past 15 years. Now instead of reading microfilms, many of the films have been digitized and are available on the internet. However, some of these databases and images of documents require going to an LDS Family History Center to view. And, as may be noted by the source citations, many of the records only became available in November of 2018 just before we began our research. This book is the result of these recent searches and serves as a research journal for collecting genealogical evidence. This is the second volume of the book – the first volume, My Saxe-Altenburg Relatives Vol. 1, analyzes and summarizes the findings reported in this research journal.
Structure of this Research Journal
In this research journal, the pages of the notebook are chapters that contain the documentation found for individuals and marriages. These chapters are collected into the following sections:
- Marriages
- Individuals – Male
- Individuals – Female
- Appendices
Finding Items in THIS RESEARCH JOURNAL
The chapters of the book are titled with the names of individuals and marriage groom and bride names. On the left hand side of the pages is a table of contents. However, the chapters are not listed in a sorted order – as a chapter was added, Pressbook placed them in the designated sections. Ordering the chapters is a manual task that has not yet been completed. Instead, the suggested way to find a record is to use the search box at the top right hand corner of the chapter. Pressbooks searches the book and presents you with a list of the last 10 chapters that it finds with the search term. Previous pages of finds can be seen by using the “Previous page” link at the bottom of the list. Multiple term phrases, such as dates and whole names, need to be enclosed with double quotation marks, eg “6 Feb 1835”.
Future Research
This e-book is a work in progress that is being edited/updated as more family information is found. If anyone knows of related family documentation, please forward the same by way of the comment boxes so that these facts. stories and images can be included.
Also, if you find errors or have suggestions, please use the comment boxes. All comments will be appreciated that will help develop and improve this research journal.
