• German-American Genealogy CD-ROM Disks
• Indians of Canada CD-ROM
• French Records Online
• Mic Barnette to Appear on Internet Chat
• Elvis Presley and Jimmy Carter Are Related
• Home Pages Highlighted

German-American Genealogy CD-ROM Disks
Heritage Books has released two CD-ROM disks by Don Heinrich Tolzmann: the "German-American Biographical Index" and "The German American Colonial Era." Both of these CD-ROM disks are electronic reprints of multiple books previously published on paper by Heritage Books. These books have long been useful for German-American genealogy research. However, the new CD-ROM versions are much more economical than the printed versions. They are also easier to store and, in many ways, easier to search. Best of all, the CD-ROM disk also includes all the software needed for Macintosh and Windows computers.

The "German-American Biographical Index" actually contains three volumes by Don Heinrich Tolzmann that are of interest to researchers studying Germans in the Midwest:

Ohio Valley German Biographical Index
Ohio Valley German Biographical Index: A Supplement
Upper Midwest German Biographical Index

The original books were published early in the 1990s and have since gone out of print. Heritage Books describes the three volumes on this CD-ROM disk as follows:

Ohio Valley German Biographical Index (1992) provides access to several major German-American works heretofore unindexed, covering the German element in the Ohio Valley from the mid-18th century to the early 20th. These works are Cincinnati in Wort und Bild (Burgheim, 1888), Deutsche Chronik in der Geschichte des Ohio-Thales und seiner Hauptstadt Cincinnati ins Besondere … (Klauprecht, 1864), Early Nineteenth-Century German Settlers in Ohio (Mainly Cincinnati and Environs), Kentucky, and Other States, Parts 1-3 (Smith, 1984) and Cincinnati Sonst und Jetzt (Tenner, 1878).

Ohio Valley German Biographical Index: A Supplement (1993) indexes Eine populare Geschichte der Stadt Peoria (Bess, 1905), The Story of German Methodism (Douglass, 1939), Cincinnati und sein Deutschthum (Fick, 1901), German Settlers and German Settlements in Indiana: A Memorial for the State Centennial 1916 (Fritsch, 1979), "We Were the Ninth": A History of the Ninth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry 1861-1864 (Grebner, 1987), Theodora Stempfel’s Festschrift: Fifty Years of Unrelenting German Aspirations in Indianapolis, 1848-1898 (Hoyt, 1991), George Theodore Probst’s The Germans in Indianapolis, 1840-1918 (Reichmann, 1989), Geschichtliche Skizze eines Amerikanischen Township (Rumelin, 1887), "Liste der Auswanderer aus Ostbevern nach Nordamerika im 19. Jahrhundert" (Schubert, 1991), Guide to the Heinrich A. Ratermann Collection of German-American Manuscripts (Sell, 1979) and Das Ohiotal - The Ohio Valley: The German Dimension (Tolzmann, 1992).

Upper Midwest German Biographical Index (1993) indexes East Prussians from Russia (Anuta, 1979), Die Deutschen von Iowa und deren Errungenschaften (Eiboeck, 1900), Pionierjahre der deutsch-amerikanischen Familien Frank-Kerler in Wisconsin und Michigan, 1849-1864 (Frank, 1911), A Heritage Deferred: The German-Americans in Minnesota (Glasrud, 1984), A Heritage Fulfilled: The German-Americans (Glasrud, 1984), Geschichte der Minnesota-Synode und ihrer einzelnen Gemeinden (1909), The Germans of Chicago (Hofmeister, 1976), Wisconsin’s Deutsch-Amerikaner bis zum Schluss des neumzehnten Jahrhunderts (Hense-Jensen, 1900), Milwaukee (Koss, 1871), The Germanic Influence in the Making of Michigan (Russell, 1927), The German Church on the American Frontier (Schneider, 1939), New Ulm, Minnesota Germans: Adults of German Birth Settled in New Ulm and Surrounding Areas 1860 (Steinhauser), "Members of the German Musical Society of Milwaukee in 1900" (Tolzmann, 1976), The Germans of Chicago (Townsend, 1932) and Of Pilgrimage, Prayer and Promise: A Story of St. Mary’s, Westphalia 1836-1986 (Weiland, 1986).

Individuals in the indexes are arranged alphabetically by surname; the source is given with each name. Together these works provide biographical indexing on a geographical scale to the German element in the area, which is nowhere else available. More than 14,600 index entries.

The second CD-ROM, "German Colonial Era," actually contains the text of several printed books:

Germany and America (1450-1700): Julius Friedrich Sachse’s History of the German Role in the Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement of the New World (1991). A description of the German role in the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the "New World," and contains depictions of the conditions in Germany which led to immigration and title pages of books encouraging German immigration. The German Immigrant in America: F.W.Bogen’s Guidebook (1992). First published in 1851, this guidebook is of interest as it shows the concerns of immigrants in general and the value of sharing one’s experience in another country with those left behind. The guidebook is written in German on one page and English on the facing page. The arrangement helped to give immigrants a convenient way to learn a new language.

German Pioneer Life: A Social History (1992). This is two volumes in one: Benjamin Rush’s article "An Account of the Manners of the German Inhabitants of Pennsylvania" (1910), and F. J. P. Schantz’s "The Domestic Life and Characteristics of the Pennsylvania-German Pioneer: A Narrative and Critical History Prepared at the Request of the Pennsylvania-German Society" (1900).. Both of these CD-ROM disks use Adobe Acrobat as the CD-ROM "engine." This is an excellent choice, as the software is easy to use and intuitive. Best of all, the Windows and Macintosh software is included on the CD-ROM disk; you do not need to purchase any other software in order to use these.

I spent some time using these CD-ROM disks and found that they were easy to navigate. Unfortunately, I don’t have any German ancestry, so I couldn’t search for my own heritage.

The two CD-ROM disks did differ a bit in their search capabilities. The "German Colonial Era" disk has no search capability at all. Each page on this CD-ROM is a scanned image of the original printed pages. As such, there is no capability to search for each word. The software does have a search function that supposedly searches for text. However, every search that I tried came up empty. Even when looking at a page with the word "Schultze" on the page, invoking a search for the word Schultze always resulted in a message of "No occurrences of Schultze were found in the document." All of the books on this CD-ROM disk do have Tables of Contents, and a couple of them also have back-of-book indexes. This is a big aid in finding specific information. However, these, too, are scanned images of the original printed Tables of Content and Indexes. Because the disks contain scanned images, nothing can be "cut and pasted" into other Macintosh or Windows programs.

In contrast, the "German-American Biographical Index" does have the capability to search for names of interest. When you run a search on this CD-ROM disk, the "hits" are highlighted on each page. This is a big help when searching for specific individuals. However, I still was unable to do a cut-and-paste.

If you are researching German ancestry in Pennsylvania or the Ohio Valley, you may well find these volumes on CD-ROM to be very helpful. Not only do they contain many records and references to specific individuals, but you will also find a lot of information about lifestyles and the difficulties that these people faced every day.

The "German Colonial Era" CD-ROM disk contains scanned images of 625 pages and is available for $28.00 U.S. funds plus shipping. The "German-American Biographical Index" contains information from approximately 300 pages of printed text and sells for $22.50 U.S. funds plus shipping. More information can be found at: http://www.heritagebooks.com

Indians of Canada CD-ROM
I had a chance to use another CD-ROM this week that will interest many people with Canadian ancestry. This, too, is an electronic reprint of a book that appeared some years ago. The full title of the original book was: Handbook of Indians of Canada published as an appendix to the Tenth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, Sessional Paper No. 21a. This 632-page book was originally published in 1912 and recently was republished electronically by Quintin Publications.

Quintin Publications describes the CD-ROM this way:

During the early exploration and settlement of North America, multitudes of Indian tribes were encountered, having diverse customs and languages. Lack of knowledge of the aborigines and of their languages led to many curious errors on the part of the early explorers and settlers: names were applied to the Indians that had no relation whatever to their aboriginal names; sometimes nicknames were bestowed, owning perhaps to personal characteristics, fancied or real…. Consequently, in the literature relating to the American Indians … thousands of such names are recorded, the significance and application of which are to be understood only after much study.

This handbook is an outgrowth of the need for a comprehensive work on the subject of Canadian Indians. Only tribes residing wholly, or in part, in Canada are treated in this publication. Its aim is to give a brief description of every linguistic stock, confederacy, tribe, sub tribe or tribal division, and settlement known to history or even to tradition, as well as the origin and derivation of every name treated whenever such is known, and to records under each and every form of the name and every other appellation that could be learned. These synonyms, in alphabetic order, are assembled as cross-references in Appendix III.

Under the tribal description one finds a brief account of the ethnic relations of the tribe, its history, its location at various periods, statistics of population, etc., are included. Accompanying each synonym (the earliest known date always being given) a reference to the authority is noted, and these references form practically a bibliography of the tribe for those who desire to pursue the subject further.

The Indians of Canada CD-ROM uses the same Adobe Acrobat software that I described earlier. In this case, only the Windows software is included on the CD-ROM disk. However, the Macintosh version of Adobe Acrobat is widely available and is free. The Macintosh owner can obtain the required software online or from another CD-ROM, then use the Indians of Canada CD-ROM on a Macintosh.

This particular CD-ROM contains scanned images of the original pages from the 1912 publication. I found that I could not do a word search, nor could I cut-and-paste text information to another Windows or Macintosh document. The CD-ROM does, however, contain the Foreword and the Table of Contents from the original publication. It also has a Schedule of Indian reservations and an extensive bibliography.

This extensive volume is a history, not a transcription of records. Very few individuals are mentioned by name. If you are looking for records of a specific ancestor, you probably will not find those references on the Indians of Canada CD-ROM. What you will find, however, is an extensive and well-documented reference work about the Indians. Thousands of tribes and sub-tribes are listed, along with thousands of place names as pronounced in the original Indian languages. If you are trying to find a Canadian tribe or location, this is perhaps the best reference available. Many of the tribes listed have since disappeared.

The Indians of Canada CD-ROM costs $29.95 (U.S. funds) plus shipping. It is available directly from the publisher. For more information, look at: http://www.quintinpublications.com/cdindian.html

French Records Online
If you are researching ancestors in France, you may be interested in a Web site that has thousands of records online. There are also a few records from Belgium and a handful from French-speaking Canada available at the same site. The databases available include:

• The St Helene's Project—registers all soldiers that received the "Ste Helene's medal" in 1857 (They were soldiers of the Napoleon's "Grande Armée").
  
• A part of Doubs (25).
  
• The departement of Eure (27).
  
• The people in Haute-Garonne (31) whose names begin with A.
  
• A (little part) of the departement of Ille et Vilaine (35).
  
• A part of the departement of Indre-et-Loire (37) (arrondissements of Tours and Chinon).
  
• A part of the departement of Landes (40).
  
• The departement of Loire (42).
  
• The departement of Haute-Loire (43).
  
• A part of the departement of Marne (51).
  
• The former departement of Meurthe (54+57).
  
• The departement of Haute-Vienne (87).
  
• The departement of Vosges (88).
  
• A part of the departement of Bas-Rhin (67).