New German records on FamilySearch

In a massive boost for anyone with German ancestors, FamilySearch has added a massive new collection of Lutheran baptism, marriage and burial records, comprising almost 80 million new records. The collection spans the years from 1500 to 1971 and was done in partnership with Ancestry.

A typical baptism record in this collection lists the name of the child, gender, name of the parents, birth date and place, parish, town and state.

A typical marriage record lists the names of the bride and groom, their year of birth, the names of the parents, the wedding date, parish, town and state.

A typical burial record in this collection lists the name of the deceased, gender, date and place of death, spouse’s name, names of the parents, parish, town and state. Some records also list the date the obituary was published, which often can provide further clues as to the names of other family members.

The collection can be searched by first name and last name.

German scripts

I have just discovered a great website where you can type in your ancestral name and see what is would look like in several old German scripts.  As I have German ancestry and my one year of high school German was both a long time ago and totally inadequate to translating old documents, I'm finding it quite useful.  Anything that helps me decipher the old documents I find is great news, and as you can see from the scripts below, some of the results look nothing like the name I typed in.  So here is the name Beseler in several different scripts.

The surname Beseler in various scripts

 Some of these, yes, I can see it is the Beseler surname at a glance.  Others, not so easily.  If I was rapidly scanning a document I would probably not pick it up - in several the B looks like L, the Es look like Ns and the S is an F.