Swiss Emigrants to Germany in the 17th Century, CD
- SKU: 2107
- ISBN: 0897258118
- Our Price:
$39.95
-
Description:
Swiss Emigrants to Germany in the 17th Century plus some emigrants to America and Huguenots to Germany, CD. 1,293 typescript pages, 2007
Hermann Friedrich Macco of Aachen, Germany, who died in the 1940s, was a professional German genealogist active from the 1880s until the 1930s. He lived in Aachen and was particularly concerned with the noble and patrician families of the Aachen area.
Among other genealogical work, he also collected data on immigrants 1650-1800 to the Palatinate area of Germany. His primary emphasis was on immigrants from Switzerland, but he also collected information on Huguenot immigrants to Germany in the same period. He wrote in 1936 that he had done most of his research in the church records of the Palatinate, and in the state archives of the Swiss cantons of Bern, Basel, Aargau, and Zürich. While he stated that the Abscheide- und Manumissionsbriefe [letters of manumission of serfs] were a particularly important source of data, a review of his material makes it clear that a very large proportion, perhaps 75%, of his data came from German parish registers, with most of the rest from other researchers’ work.
He began to publish his genealogical work in 1884, often in Aachens Vorzeit the magazine published by the local Aachen genealogical society, but he also published several books. He continued to publish as late as 1936, when he described his findings in the article “Über die Einwanderung nach Deutschland, insbesondere in die Pfalz (1650-1800)” (Jahrbuch für auslandsdeutsche Sippenkunde. Stuttgart, 1936, p. 125), but his most active period was from the 1890s through about 1910.
For more than half a century his 1650-1800 immigrant collection has been available in America only on microfilm, under the title Swiss Immigrants to the Palatines in Germany and to America, 1650-1800, and Huguenots in the Palatines and Germany (FHL 2 reels, 823,861 and 823,862, as retyped in 1954 by the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). We are making it available now on CD, bringing to you the CD advantages of easy home use, fast data access, and simple storage.
His collection contains about 15,500 separate entries in 1,293 typescript pages, all written in German, with many of the entries naming several people. These entries are in rough alphabetical order, but with the limitation that surnames with prefixes (such as von, de, de la, d’, etc.) unfortunately have been alphabetized under the body of the surname. Thus you will need to search under both Baume and La Baume, for instance. There are groupings of similarly-spelled surnames, so you must be vigilant in looking for spelling variations such as Schmid vs Schmidt, etc. In addition to the alphabetically arranged main entries, an index of some 8,000 additional names of people mentioned within the entries follows in 160 typed pages of two columns. In all, the CD contains 1,457 pages and about 23,500 names.
Macco gives a brief list of six printed sources, and in presenting his findings also cites references in the four Swiss state archives which he visited. Some references are detailed, many others are no more useful than “Staatsarchiv Bern”. Many of the references include mention of specific German parish registers but he usually does not give a better reference than the date of the entry.
Some of his entries seem almost intriguingly nebulous. He says of Daniel Sotterland that Sotterland was “gestorben in Neustadt an der Haard, am 11 Februar 1662", but does not tell us why he thinks that this man’s death record in 1662 indicates he was either Swiss or Huguenot. Sotterland does not seem to be a Swiss surname today. Similarly, he says of Johannes Nicolaus Haag that Haag was the Gerichts in Ellerstadt in the Pfalz, was Lutheran, was born in Wintrich bei Bernkastel, was married twice and had two children. His source presumably was the Lutheran church book in Ellerstadt, but nowhere does he indicate why this German Lutheran man should be presumed to be Swiss and thus possibly related to the Reformed Haag family of Bern, Switzerland. Wintrich is a village some 12 kilometers (7½ miles) west of Bernkastel, Germany, and it seems unlikely that Macco presumed a connection to the Swiss city of Bern simply on the basis of sound.
