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Thursday, September 20, 2007

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.

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