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The family tree is now online at Davies and Geleick family tree . Most people are now fully sourced and updates are planned to add more pri...

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If you can add any data to the Geleick family tree please feel free to contact me, if you think you may be related directly or by marriage then please share the information, I can offer the full family tree details, with research notes and sources, to anyone who is researching trees that may join with mine.


Post your Genealogy Research on FamilyTreeCircles.com

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Geleick Family tree online

Just to keep everyone up to date with the research I have published the whole tree - so far - online.
The Geleick family worldwide - Family Tree for Geleick, Sacken, Artz, Arends, Davies and 141 other surnames.: "About The Geleick family worldwide The Geleick's are a rare breed, there are very few of us around today, and not many ancestors either. In some ways this rarity makes finding our family easier, almost everyone must be related, but harder as there are very few details to find. Currently there are family members in The Netherlands (4 plus partners and children), in Germany (2 plus several families not yet contacted), Switzerland (only 1) and Singapore. Historically the roots go back to the 1700's around the Königsberg, Ost Preußen area (now Kaliningrad, Russia) although there may be earlier links back to Thuringen, Germany, Poland or Slovakia. One of the reasons for there being so few of us is that there are documented several spelling variations, and there are some variations that are not yet proved. Gerleick is documented as is Geleijk. What is not yet confirmed is the connection with name like Gleick, Gleich and several other similar spellings. One connection I heard about this week was the name is derived from the Polish name Galajk, but that needs further research."

If you want to access the tree you will need a password, just mail me and ask for one, it would be nice if you also told me why you want access and if you had some data to share.

Monday, August 27, 2007

German Atlas

For anyone researching their Prussian ancestors and who do not know where places were this is a great online map with a searchable index
Atlas des Deutschen Reichs: "An atlas of the German Empire - a UW-Madison Digital Resource \ / "

I had an ancestor that was born on Schaaken, E. Prussia and the only trace I could find in a modern Atlas was Schloß Schaaken, while it would be nice to have an ancestor that lived in a castle I was dubious about the location. This map from 1892 lists a place Schaaken that is only a short distance from where the rest of the family lived, much more likely. Interestingly it also shows Cranz, where most family lived, with 2 alternative names. I already knew it could be spelled Kranz and that it now has a Russian name, Selenogradzk, but here it was listed as Seebad Kranz (showing it was a holiday resort) and Kranzkuhren.









Cranz around 1900.

The map does not cover every small place, my village is not listed or shown on the map even though it has been here for 800 years, though in 1890 there would only of been about 10 houses here.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Happy Birthday Horst Geleick

I may a a day or two out but Horst Geleick is 87 years old about now.

Even better he is also studying his family history and is the brother of Ruth Geleick, we should both be able to fill in some gaps in each others trees and confirm or deny some of the myths. Don forget genealogy without proof is only mythology!

He has also done research into the source of the name, it seems the name comes from the Polish name Galajk, I am looking forward to seeing the documents for that. I had thought that King Ferdinand had relocated some of our ancestors to East Prussia after a plague had killed most of his people there and he wanted to be sure that Lutheran Germans were protecting his lands from the Catholic Poles and the Russians. Initially I was confused by the fact that Wilhelmus Werbertus was Catholic, but I just found out he became Catholic after the war, understandable that he should turn to religion really as he lived in Arnhem when the Nazi occupation took place, he was sent to Orienburg camp north of Berlin until he had proved his German descent after which he was returned to Arnhem.

The identity card of Wilhelmus Werbertus Geleick from 1941.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Holocaust research

While listening to DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour podcast: I was searching the Holocaust pages of Jewishgen.org . Well you never know, there were roots in Germany before the second war and there was some idea that some of the family may have been Jewish.

There is good news and bad news, the good news is that there were no references to Geleick in any of the reports, the bad news is of course the sheer number of names that there are there. Also not so good are the number of names similar to Geleick, perhaps phonetic misspellings, perhaps just different family names. I think I will need to return here when I have confirmed some of the name variations.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Anna Augusta Maria Geleick

Who is Anna Augusta Maria Geleick?

She shows up once in a search of the Netherlands Genlias database Genlias - Zoek uw stamboom uit

She is given as the wife of Dirk Veerman on his death certificate, 19 April 1943, he was 46 years old at the time but it was in Arnhem, the Netherlands, during the German occupation.

He was the son on Lambert Veerman and Aagie Kerkmeester, born in Huizen, N. Holland. Lambert was a fish dealer.

There is no record of their marriage, or of her birth or death. I will make the genealogists error of assuming something until I learn better. It could be that she was born in Germany (quite likely), it could be that she is the third sister of Gottfried Julius August Geleick, that is another child of Gottfried Julius Geleick and Johanna Gertrude Onderstall (not so likely but possible) I know they have 2 daughters born in Krefeld, Germany and the one son born in Cranz (then in E. Prussia, now in Russia). It is possible that they married in Germany though how they met is another story, it is also possible that after Dirk died she returned to Germany, why she would do this in wartime is a mystery, or perhaps she returned after the war for some reason.

It is also possible that she died during the attack on Arnhem bridge that took place a year after Dirk died, and the body was not found or recognized. None of the Geleicks that lived in Arnhem after the war knew about her. It is possible that most of the missing pre war documents were destroyed during the war but not those after, so unless she is still alive in secret then she did not die in the Netherlands.

Anyone with any information or just ideas is most welcome to post a comment of an email.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Where is Ruth Geleick?

Ancestry.com is a bit like Rome, all roads seem to lead there, at some point I may actually pay for their service but at the moment I am quite happy with the free account that does not offer much. What it does give me is the occasional free taster such as recently free access to the New York Passenger Lists, where I found out about Ruth Geleick.

Ruth left Hamburg, Germany 24 April 1954 on m.v. "Italia" and arrived in New York City, NY a few days later. There the track goes cold, and I can, so far, find nothing in Germany about her. I assume that in New York, or wherever she traveled after arriving there, she married and did the American thing of changing her name. Or it could be the next time she shows up in official documents she had her name misspelled by the official or herself. I did come across a US Social Security death notice for a Ruth Gleick but that may be someone else.

My greatest hope is that I will come across a reference to her in Germany as the sister or daughter of someone I have not yet traced.

If anyone knows anything about Ruth please let me know.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Genealogy Sites on the Internet

As a start for researching and for learning about how to research here are a few links, in no particular order. Some of these may prove useful everyday some you may never use again, most have some free information at least, some are totally free, some link to commercial parts of their own or other sites.

One of the terms that will keep cropping on at these and other sites is GEDCOM, which may mean nothing to a new researcher.

GEDCOM Briefly Defined

  • GEDCOM is a generic, database format designed to allow users to share family history database files between differing genealogy software programs.
  • To create a GEDCOM file (in most programs), go to "File, Export to GEDCOM" and create a new file with a ".ged" file extension after the name.
  • To read another person's GEDCOM file (in most programs), go to "File, Import from GEDCOM" and create a new database file that can be opened in your genealogy software program. This will not merge with your existing database file unless you indicate that you wish for the two files to be merged.
  • GEDCOM files can easily be shared with others via e-mail attachment or on a disk.
  • GEDCOM files can easily be uploaded to lineage-linked databases.
  • GEDCOM files can be converted for use in genealogy companion software programs and utilities that will create things like specialty charts, books, scrapbooks and web sites.
So in short it is a way to store and share genealogical data, but there is a warning I must add.

Many sites suggest you upload your gedcom data to their site to help others, and on many sites that is all there is to it, users can see each others data and form links to their existing data increasing the tree size of all concerned. Some of the commercial sites though use your data in another way, for example by selling your (and other peoples) data on compilation CD's or by charging users a subscription to access the data, data that you have freely shared! I am quite happy to share any of my research freely, hopefully I will get more data back in return, but I am not at all happy about a company hoarding as much data as it can in order to make money on the backs of unpaid researchers. These same companies also gather indexes to public data such as census returns or vital data and charge users to search the indexes, data which should be public domain and freely available. So I suggest you check what your gedcom data will be used for before you upload it.

Anyway back to the links -

For more information than you can shake a stick at

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
  • A categorized & cross-referenced index to genealogical resources on the Internet.
  • A list of links that point you to genealogical research sites online.
  • A free jumping-off point for you to use in your online research.
  • A "card catalog" to the genealogical collection in the immense library that is the Internet.
  • Your genealogical research portal onto the Internet.

261,900+ links for family history!
252,550 in
180+ categories, 9,350+ new and uncategorized



More free tips and ideas from Treasure Maps

Free genealogy search tips, how to articles, and family tree helps:

This site will lead you to some unique, helpful methods, free genealogy lessons, tutorial, hints and tips that will send you in the right direction with your family history.

Take your time and have fun with the free tutorials and courses.



I confirmed a lot of data about grandfather Geleick from this site, and met a step grandson that was unknown about. It can be a little awkward to learn how to use it but is a great start for sharing data

Add your family tree, share it and discover more about your ancestors.


You may or may not agree with the religious beliefs of the Mormons but you will soon begin to appreciate the work they have done in collecting family history records, it is almost impossible to list what they have and, so far, not all of it is online so you may end up getting out of your chair and visiting one of their family history centers to fill in some missing details.

FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service


Next time I'll post about the Geleick family and how the tree is growing.
As with everything in life there are at least 2 ways to do anything, the easy way and the hard way. I usually prefer the easy way which means genealogical research is done mostly from the comfort of my chair with a computer, and storing/ sorting data is done on the same computer.

There is also an expensive way and a cheaper way to do most things. Researching your family history is something you can pay someone to do, which can get very expensive, but if all you want is the facts then it is the easiest way. I enjoy the researching so intend to do most of the work myself but by finding other like minded researchers to share information with we should all save time by not duplicating effort and perhaps make friends, if not discover new cousins.

A lot of the tools you need to research with a computer are free, as is the storage of data, if you know where to look or you can buy commercial software and subscriptions to data sites, the choice is yours. I am going to try and do everything without any cost and will detail my efforts here together with some of the commercial stuff, just in case you want to try it.

The first thing I need is some software on my computer to work with the data I am hoping to gather. A simple Google search gave - Results 1 - 10 of about 2,200,000 for genealogy software. This list includes commercial software as well as free so I changed the search and got Results 1 - 10 of about 2,280,000 for genealogy software +free this confused me until I realised that it was adding pages for the free trials and other free things from genealogy sites. Time to get sensible with Google!

You may have noticed that the last search had a + before the word free, I think most users do not know about these search tools, the + before a word (with no space between) means the word must be found, in the same way a - tells Google to exclude the term from the results, so adding -windows would exclude any results for windows programs.

As I prefer the freedom of Open Source Software I use Linux and did a Google search for +genealogy +Linux. I still got 2,160,000 hits but this time almost all the first page were for one program , so of to the main site for it.

GRAMPS helps you track your family tree. It allows you to store, edit, and research genealogical data with your computer. GRAMPS attempts to provide all of the common capabilities of other genealogical programs, but, more importantly, to provide an additional capability of integration not common to these programs. This is the ability to input any bits and pieces of information directly into GRAMPS and rearrange/manipulate any/all data events in the entire data base (in any order or sequence) to assist the user in doing research, analysis and correlation with the potential of filling relationship gaps.
GRAMPS is an open source genealogical software program. It requires the help of it's users to make manuals and tutorials. Fortunately, many users have contributed to the project, by adding tips, tutorials, user guides and examples to this wiki. Your continued involvement to this wiki is required to allow new users to quickly understand GRAMPS, and find answers to their usability questions.

Gramps is also available as a live cd, so it will run on a windows system with the added advantage of letting you try Linux on your computer with risking losing your existing data.

Another option is to build your family tree online, there are lots of sites offering this service, some are free, some appear to be free and others are commercial, I'll post more about these next time, as well as updating the family research.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

The start

Just who are the Geleick's and where did they come from?

Most people have probably had the same thoughts about their family, this blog details the research I have done into the Geleick family, you may find the methods used will help you find you ancestors, you may find you are related to the Geleick family, you may just find all the hard work I do interesting. In any case you are welcome to read this and send me your comments.

The first thing I did was write down everything I knew, or thought I knew, about the family. That gave me half a dozen names and a few dates, not an extensive family tree yet!

Next step was to ask other family members what they knew, this added a lot more people and some more dates and the first disputes. What people remember is not always accurate, even the name of one great aunt was in dispute and some dates and even places of birth.

So we come to one of the important facts for genealogists, written data is usually more accurate than memory, especially if it was written at the time the event took place. Assume nothing until you have the evidence.

So now I need two things, a source of data and a method to store the data I am collecting in a sensible manner, so I can display the findings and find the data when I need to add to it or confirm it. Luckily the net provides both these so I'll go and do some research and see what works for me.