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, -

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