Saturday, May 02, 2009

BRICK WALLS IN DANISH GENEALOGY

Culture and Travel: "Perhaps the most important pitfall in genealogy everywhere is the very common failure to question whether your findings are reasonable. It’s a trap especially easy to fall into in Danish research, because there are so very many people with the same name. . . .

EXAMPLE 1: Place-Name Errors: Can’t find your ancestor in a Danish census or the churchbook for what you think is the right parish?
You may be looking in the wrong place, even if the place has the right name. If, for instance, your ancestor was supposedly from “Balle, Denmark”, but you can’t find her in the parish so named in Viborg Amt, the first thing to realize is that there are at least 9 villages in Jylland alone named Balle and dozens of places in Denmark where “Balle” is part of the name.

You can locate most of them using Krabsen’s site "http://www.krabsen.dkstednavnedatabase/"
or, for the most complete results, use J. P. Trap’s Danmark, a gazetteer of Denmark
(you can order this on microfiche through the Family History Center nearest you). Then you can start looking in those parishes.
J. P. Trap Denmark - Google Search

Another useful source is the Genealogical Guidebook & Atlas of Denmark by Frank Smith and Finn A. Thomsen. I wore out my first copy and am now working on my second."
Genealogical Guidebook & Atlas of Denmark by Frank Smith and Finn A. Thomsen - Google Search

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home