Strategies for Researching Family History in Other Countries - HIST 212: Thinking About the Dead (Elizabeth Miller) - Fall 2025 - Harold & Wilma Good Library at Goshen College

Basics

Who are you looking for?
Identify time/place of departure and/or arrival:
- shiplists
  - passports
Identify place of origin as specifically as possible:
- be alert to changing jurisdictions (Example: “Germany”)
  - be alert to spelling changes/corruptions of place names

Tools

What you already know
What you can easily find:
- At home: Familysearch.org [register for free account]
- Goshen Public Library: Ancestry Library, primarily U.S., Canada, UK (only available at GPL) HeritageQuest Online (also available for home use with GPL card number)
- Mennonite Historical Library (only available onsite with GC or MHL login): Ancestryinstitution.com (Search/Explore by Location): Good Library A-Z Databases
Ways to learn:
- Familysearch.org Family History Research Wiki (Search/Wiki) [register for free account]
- Cyndi’s List of Genealogical Sites

Hurdles

Language [look for the British/US flag or use “translate this page” options]
Handwriting
Paywalls
Lack of records (never archived; lost or destroyed)

Some examples of great records available online at no cost

Shiplists
1820-1957 New York arrivals
French civil records
Click on the relevant département under “Portails départmentaux” [at right side of page] to locate online civil records
Moravian church records (Czech Republic)
Norwegian records (various)
Swiss parish records
Click on “+” icon beside “Staatsarchiv des Kantons Bern”, then on “+” icon beside “C. Staatliche Sammlungen” and then on “+” icon beside “Kirchenbücher.” Website is a bit clunky; seems to function better in a Mozilla browser than in a Chrome browser.

Example of pay site with content not available on Ancestry.com

German church records
Mostly Protestant church records—some not available on LDS microfilm. Expensive enough that you want to be sure that records from relevant place/era are included.

Examples of Ancestry.com expansion of coverage of international records

Mexican National Census, 1930
Sweden Church Records, 1451-1953: includes household examination rolls (annual visits of clergy to individual residences with reports on conditions in home)

NOTE: Family History Library Centers (LDS) provide free access to some images through workstations on their premises that otherwise are not available online. These images are also available if you are researching at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne.