Family Shield or Wapen

It has been known for some time that the family had a wapen, or shield, but the exact details have been lost for 59 years or so. Current research has brough this shield into the open, though it is not certain if this is the correct shield, it is the one listed in Germany heraldry books, so until further research gives me a better idea then this is it.

And yes this is the colour it should be!

The Wall

Every genealogist or family researcher comes up against a brick wall at some point. The point where further research does not seem possible, The sources of information are hidden behind brickwalls that you see no way past.

Geleick family research has reached a brick box, there seems no way to proceed in any direction.

There are several islands of family groups in the tree that should link together, there should also be some ancestors of the groups, perhaps common ancestors and there should be some descendants.

There are in the tree only 3 living males to carry the name forward to a new generation. Julius Geleick (Juul) is over 60 and as far as I know had no children, Horst Geleick is nearly 90 and had one son, Detlef Geleick, who remains the only possible chance of taking the name forward.

I do not yet know anything about Horst or his sister Ruth Geleick other than Ruth emigrated to the USA in 1954, their parents might link some things together, but to begin research in Germany you need to know the city where births, deaths or marriages occurred to get any chance of tracing the event. All I know is Horst is in Switzerland now and Ruth sailed from Hamburg.

Anna Augusta Maria Geleick is still a mystery, the only record of her is when she reported the death of her husband in Arnhem during the war. The other 3 family groups and Gottfried Julius Geleick all date between 1780 to 1883 and all of them come from East Prussia and they all lived within 20 Km of each other in what is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Many records were transported from the Russian front to Berlin and Leipzig, many more were destroyed in the war and some were taken to Moscow by the Russians. Putin did recently offer to return these to Germany but the Duma refused to allow it.

One rather interesting development this month is the discovery in the Telephone directory of 12 families named Geleick all living in the same area of Germany , near Götha in Thuringen. This new group could well all be related, as they live near each other and perhaps there is some common link back to our line. King Ferdinand did encourage a lot of people from central Germany to resettle in East Prussia when most people there had been killed by a plague, so that may be a link.

Where to go now?

In order to break down some of the walls I am going to try contacting Horst again, he must at least know some anecdotal facts about his parents and sister. I am also going to print some family history details, in German, and send them to the newly discovered families asking them for information and the other step is to visit the family history center in Leipzig, I have heard they have copied most of the records from East Prussia in the Leipzig archive, and I have found a film number for the names beginning with G. I did try to go there last week but they were closed as the only people running the center were on holiday.

Free Software

In an earlier post about Software I hinted at some useful items then I added some websites. I have been doing a lot more since then and though I would share some tips on Free Software.

There are options for free software whether you use Linux or the bloated and security risky Windows option. For me the important things are free, or at least cheap, and secure, as in I won't lose my work if I reinstall and accessibility, if I'm at home or on vacation, at a family history center or visiting relatives I need to have access to my research.

Fortunately with the increasing availability of wifi access life is much simpler, I used to drag a laptop around with a copy of everything on it then I could update my home system when I got there. All extra work and the risk of losing all the updates if something happened to the laptop. I needed a better solution.

Google came to the rescue, love or hate Google it does provide some good tools. First you need a Google email account, this Gmail login is the universal login to all the other tools, if you don't want to use the Gmail system you don't have to, just access it every few months to keep it active, or you could just use it for genealogy work or for all your mail and filter the genealogy stuff, it is up to you.

Next you can setup your own Google start page, you can add all sorts of gadgets to it including your Gmail access and the rest of the tools listed below, you don't need the personalized Google page but it does help with an overview, notice it uses your Gmail login.

Next on the list is Google Notebook, it is just what it says it is, as you are surfing and you find something that you may need to follow up, just select the text, right click and 'Note this' the clip is added to your notebook with the web address and is then available whenever you log in on any computer.

Goggle Docs and Spreadsheets is the online document program, you can create documents from your notes, from webpages and just by typing, once again it is always available online and all you need is your Gmail login to get to it.

All these tools can be pulled together with the Google toolbar, which gives several other options as well. I have also added Google calendar and Blogger tools so I can work from almost anywhere in the world knowing my data is secure and available.

As for the family tree itself, I am still undecided, I could host it myself on one of the spare domains I have, but that is not really free, so I have, temporarily at least, hosted it with tribalpages.com. The basic package is free (with advertising) but most important it can be password protected so only known users can access it, though it does allow other users to search for links to their tree they cannot access the data without asking for the password. I have some issues with their helpdesk and the running of the site in general, so I am still searching for the perfect solution.

Have a laugh

Just some humor today

Genealogy humor: "He who has no fools, knaves, or beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning." Old English Proverb

Internet Genealogy - Home

For lots of info on researching your tree in Germany, not only useful for US researchers, -

Internet Genealogy - Home : "Free Issue Cover Download a complete 64-page Extra ISSUE Free of Charge! You may have read some of the great reviews about Internet Genealogy. Now we want to give you a chance to see for yourself what Internet Genealogy has to offer – with no obligation. Click here and download a full 64-page issue (in pdf format) to read at your leisure. Then decide if you want to subscribe."

The magazine also has lots of other interesting articles, maybe enough to make you subscribe?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

• 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!

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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

• FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service
  THE genealogy web site of the LDS Church. Includes the ability to search the IGI, the Ancestral File, the Family History Library Catalog, and web site submissions. Also has user mailing lists, online ordering of FHL research materials and allows you to preserve your own research online.
  • Family History Library
    • Family History Centers
    • Family History Library Catalog
  • Family Search Online Distribution Center
    Download and order software and research materials.
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Search for Ancestors
    • All Resources
    • Ancestral File
    • International Genealogical Index
    • Pedigree Resource File
    • Web Sites
  • Share
  • What's New on FamilySearch
• Mormon Genealogy
  A researchers guide to finding genealogical data using LDS resources on the internet and in Family History Centers.

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.

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.