Although I have been researching my family roots for over 20 years, there is so much new information becoming available everyday. Many of my dead ends are not dead anymore. The internet, Ancestry, and being able to communicate 24x7 with people around the the world instantaneously has actually made it so that you have more data than you can possibly sort through in a lifetime.
Several weeks before leaving for a family research trip to Germany in April, I ran across a new website with records provided by the Oldenburg (Germany) archives. The new information was from the request for German citizens to emigrate from Germany to other parts of the world. The records including birth and baptism locations. What a find and quite timely, may I add. We were able to walk in the towns where my great-grandparents (Grone, Meyer, Roeber and Koester) lived, were baptized and were married. This is a beautiful area of the world and I really appreciate that I experienced this trip with my Mom and Dad. We did see and learn so much, but also have so many more questions that are unanswered.
We really enjoyed the tour of the emigration museum in Bremerhaven. That is where a great number of the settlers of Northeast Nebraska embarked on their "new world" journey. One of my targets for future research includes digging into the immigration hub of Hooper, Nebraska where we see that hundreds of people from Germany passed through on their route to a new life in America.
This website will also host my Stephen Carhart family pages and well as the research findings for the Carhart One Name Study (will explain that one in another blog). I hope you enjoy and please email if you have questions, additions, or corrections.