A little Genealogy Update Part 1

I don't know if you're interested in my past family, but I thought I'd throw this our here anyway.

If I've mentioned this before, just keep reading. It'll get better.

When I do a search for one specific relative, I check all the normal websites. Ancestry, MyHeritage, Family Search, etc. Back in mid-January I was looking for that specific person and couldn't find anything more than a date of birth. I have something like 25 different sites I can look at, but again when you find a person is from a particular country, that narrows down the places you can look.

So, on January 15th I was looking and decided to just do a Google search. One can not expect results from a search that returns a million and a half hits. I gave it my best shot and started through the first couple pages. As usual, nothing. Then I came across an actual hit. It was on a website called GEDBAS. Turned out it was a genealogy website that was translating the Quackenburg Church Register. OK, doesn't mean anything to you, right? More on that tomorrow.

Quackenburg is in Poland. Most of the Polish documentation was destroyed during WWI and WWII as well as the cemeteries. Burned documents. Plowed cemeteries. Headstones used for building material or just laid to waste like the Tarutino Cemetery in Bessarabia, Ukraine. I have several relatives buried there that I've been able to verify and I'm sure many that I can't, although it is being restored by an acquaintance from Canada.

Back to GEDBAS. As usual for any new site, I searched for the last name Kautz. Seven pages of Kautzes. Seven pages of information I've not been able to find anywhere else. Dates of birth and death, places of birth and death. In many cases children not listed on other sites. I've probably added an additional 400 or so people to the family tree.

A treasure trove of information. I've been in touch with the owner of the site and have thanked him many times for the hard work he's doing. 

Unfortunately the ghosts that are my Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother still evade me. I have hopes that maybe they will turn up as Kai continues to translate the documents.

More tomorrow in part 2.

Stay tuned.