Looking through the city directories that the Oshkosh Public Library posted on their website and comparing the names to various censuses I tried to get a feel of who was the earliest to arrive. This list is by no means definitive. It is just a quick sampling. Some names claim Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria or Prussia at different times. I included them here if there is conflicting information. It will take research from their descendents to determine the correct place of origin. Generally we are not interested in people from Prussia. We are trying to keep the scope of this website in the Boehmerwald. So a name could be included here because they claim the right area or the name is associated with the Highholders later. But it doesn't necessarily mean they are. Also names could be missing because they claimed the wrong area or the information was recorded wrong.

Two experiences with archives in 
Germany and Bohemia

Passau Archives experience

by Shane Edgar 

From 

Dr. Herbert W. Wurster

Archivdirektor, Passau

Dear Sir,

 We are able to provide more data about your ancestors Herman Stadler (born February 06, 1846 or 1841 in Bischofsreut) and Creszenz Nigl (born October 30, 1843 in Bischofsreut as well as their parents J. George Stadler and Anna Sammer and Josef Nigl (born March 30, 1799) and Theresia Weishaupl (born October 27, 1806).

 The following is some GENERAL INFORMATION on our procedures:

The sacramental registers  (before ca. 1900) of all the parishes of our diocese are in the custody of the diocesan archives.

All genealogical research carried out on private behalf has to be paid for, even if it is without positive result (Even then we do provide a definitive result, because we can definitely tell you, if your ancestors have not come from our area!). For research time we charge EUR 30, per half an hour. We are able to work along that line, because have established a data base covering all the weddings in the extant wedding registers of all the parishes of nowadays diocese of Passau before 1900. The ca. 800.000 index entries encompass surnames (of bridegrooms and brides), Christian names, place and time of wedding. Therefore we are (among others) able to determine the existence of families of given names easily.

For data provided by the "Historical Population Database of the Diocese of Passau before 1900" the following charges will be raised:

1.3. The charges are composed as follows:

1.3.1. Basic charge: EUR 5,

1.3.2. District charge: Per parish from which records are obtained from:

EUR 1,

1.3.3. Charges on data sets:

             Per register datum

            from wedding index:        EUR 1,00

            from wedding register:     EUR 5,00

If you are prepared to accept these charges, we will carry out work for you.

I am sorry to tell you, however, that there is an enormous amount of genealogical queries and we do not have enough staff to answer comprehensive research requests as fast as we would like to. In the case of such a request I have to ask for your patience; it will take several months before we will be able to answer in depth.

Could you please provide your postal address?

Yours sincerely

Dr. Herbert W. Wurster

Archivdirektor

From: dr.herbert.wurster@bistum-passau.de

Private researcher in Bohemian archives

By Peter Kinderman

I contacted Felix Gundacker by email and inquired what it would take to do research for me in the Southern Bohemian Archives in Trebon, Czech Republic. Basically all he needed was a name and a date and a village. The main names I gave him were  the names of my paternal great grandfather (John Kindermann)  and my grandmothers father (Joseph Winkelbauer). I gave him several more names to fill out the line. I also gave him my maternal line since I did not know where they came from, but they were not present at all in the Bohemian archives.  The dates I gave him were assumed to be correct. They either came from tombstones or other family records. The village of the Kindermann line was thought to be Salnau. The village of the Winkelbauers or any other name was unknown. 

Mr. Gundacker visits the Trebon archives often and is very familiar with the records. As luck would have it he was going there within two weeks. I was able to sign up for this trip and by doing so the travel expenses were split between several people.  

Within a very short time I received an email from Felix stating that the trip was a huge success. He was able to find records on over 300 people as far back as 1664. Most individuals had several records such as marriage and birth.  There were 208 direct ancestors with 34 in the twelfth generation alone. He was also able to find many siblings. Almost all the dates that I had from records in America were wrong. The Kindermann village was also wrong. We actually came from Schönau, a small village up the road from Salnau. I now had names, dates and villages of almost everyone, but not quite. As it turned out Johann Kindermann's father Ignatz was illegitimate and there appeared to be no record of a marriage of his mother, Maria. So the Kindermann line is not my line.  I do have a theory on what surname the father was but have no way of proving it. It may take DNA testing.  If the father of Ignatz been found the number of records could have doubled. That is how complete these records are. The Czech archives does not do mail order searching. You have to go there in person. The records are not microfilmed by LDS.

A week later I received an email of all the information and later a packet arrived in the mail. The information contained all the records in order by ancestor number with the records typewritten in either Latin or German. The records were translated into English.  He also included a family tree and a map.

Now you maybe wondering just how much this all cost. Well, I will warn you it wasn't cheap. With the number of hours involved in researching and transcribing and translating I consider it money well spent. Since I do not read or speak German, Latin or Czech I would never have been able to read the records. The records are also written in an old German script called Kurrent, which is difficult to read. He was able to accomplish in two weeks what would have taken forever to do. I was also planning a trip to Europe in a few months and did not want to spend all my time in an archive trying to decipher ledger books. I also wanted to go to the correct place. Without finding the correct villages I would have been lost. The cost came out to about $5.00 a direct line ancestor or less than half that per record. I will have him do more research in the future to answer a few questions and fill in a few gaps.

See BOHEMIA RESEARCHED NAMES on my Kinderman website

Professional researcher for Bohemia
 http://www.ihff.at.  contact Mr. Gundacker at office@ihff.at.

More Links

http://www.dbb-ev.de/index01.html

http://www.737thtankbattalion.org/Victory/

October, 2005

Time to start thinking about attending.  

Ellis Island Immigration

I was playing around with the Ellis Island site and was checking out the listings by village and found a few interesting items. It may be worth investigating the connections between families that came from the same village but went to other places in America.

From Budweis, there are 272 names

From Passau, 156 names

From Kuschwarda, 23 names: all names familiar to Oshkosh

From Horice, 40

From Winterberg, 40 or Czech Vimperk, 7

From Prachatice, 40

From Bergreichenstein, 21

From Freyung, 7

From Grafenau, 8

From Grainet, 4

From Annathal, 5

From Haidmuhle, 3