Transcription and Translation of a Church Record Written in German

Sometimes church records are an entry in a ledger without a formal document.  That is the case with this death record for Carl Kropp from the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church (which became the Zion United Christan Church) in Steubenville, Ohio.

It is written in German but not in one of the more-difficult-to-translate old German scripts such as Suetterlin or Kurrent.  Yet because the handwriting and German words are unfamiliar to me it has not been a quick transcription nor translation.  Google Translate has been helpful, especially because I could try out possible spellings.

Below is a transcription of the handwritten German words and beneath that is a translation from German to English.

Kropp Carl geb. [geboran] am 2c ^ten Januar 1835
Kropp Carl born                 on  2nd  January 1835

in Heiddersdorf, Hannover, verherheiratet c. Sophie
in Heiddersdorf, Hannover,      married    with Sophie

Meintzen am 14 ^ten September 1863.  Gestorben
Meintzen on  14th   September 1863.   Died

am 30 ^ten Mai 1905 an, ["]general debility" Abends
on  30th  May 1905 of,  ["]general debility" in the evening

6 [???], beirdigt am 2 ten Juni auf dem
6 [???],  buried  on   2nd  June on  the

Union Friedhofe.  Die Hinterbluebene:  Seine
Union Cemetery.  The     survivors:         his

Wittwe und 5 lebende Kinder:  Wilhelmine
widow  and 5  living  children:  Wilhelmina

Schuette, Wilhelm, Heinrich, Karl Kropp,
Schuette,  William,   Henry,   Karl Kropp,

und Sophie Spahn.   (Geweindeglied)
and Sophie Spahn.      (Member)

Notes and Comments
On the German words and translation:  Google Translate sometimes gives different translations for the same word.  I am unclear whether "am" is "on" or "of" in English.  I used whichever made sense.   And there is that word at the beginning of the fifth line that I was unable to decipher or translate.  The "6" after it may indicate the time at which Carl died.

The location of Carl's birth looks like it could be Huddersdorf but I was unable to locate a town by that name.  However there is a town named Heiddersdorf.  The minister's dots over his "i's" are barely discernible or are higher than usual, making the handwriting uncertain enough that I went with Heidersdorf.   I'm aware that villages and towns can disappear over time and that in 1835 there may have been a town called Huddersdorf which now no longer exists.

This document gives Carl's date and location of birth; his wife's name and their marriage date; his death date and burial location; and the names of living children at the time of Carl's death.  This record is a page from a journal and has no date on it.  I have no other information about it than the church from which it came.  The citation will be minimal.

While Carl is not the collateral ancestor in question -- his wife, Sophie Meinzen Kropp is -- the location named on this record may be helpful in finding where they were married which could, in turn, be helpful in finding Sophia's city of birth (and by extension, possibly her brother Henry Carl Meinzen's city of birth, too).  (That's me:  ever the optimist.)

--Nancy.

Copyright ©2016 Nancy Messier. All Rights Reserved.
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Helps for Translating the Old German Typeface

As you search for your German ancestors there may be times when a search engine will find an ancestor's name in a newspaper which is printed in German.  (Isn't OCR amazing?!)  What happens when you know or suspect the article is about your ancestor but you can't read German?   There's help if you're willing to patiently examine the letters and translate them.

I find the chart at right useful because it shows our Roman letters and both the old German type and the old German script.   It will be helpful when translating newspapers as well as old German documents with mixed type and script.   This is from KrauseHouse.

America Writes Home is another source showing Roman letters and both German type fonts and script letters.  From all of these sources you can see variations of script, though the type fonts are essentially the same.  If you are trying to translate a document with both type and script such as a church or civil record, it's helpful to have a variety of sources since you may need to determine which type of script was used.  A previous post, Helps for Translating That Old German Handwriting, gives sources to aid in the translation of script lettering.

The chart at left, also from KrauseHouse, may be a bit better than the one above because it includes modified vowels and compound consonants, integral parts of the German language.

KrausHouse has another chart which shows Roman letters, German letters, German script letters, and approximate pronunciation in German.  It could be helpful if you need to spell out a word to a German speaker.

After you've translated the old German font into Roman letters, you'll still need to translate from German to English unless you're already able to do that.  If you can't, I find BeoLingus helpful for just such a situation.

Google News Archive has several German newspapers if you'd like to practice your translation skills.  (You can look at this one if you like.)   I tried it and decided it's not easy. Nor was there much incentive since I chose a large font advertisement (because I couldn't find a news article about my ancestor).

My motive for learning to translate old German into English is this:  a year or so ago I learned that my great-grandfather, Henry Meinzen, may have served in the Civil War.  Since he would have recently arrived from Germany, I thought perhaps his enlistment would have been mentioned in one of the local German newspapers.  I thought it wouldn't be too hard to recognize at least his last name if I saw it.  How wrong I was!  German newspaper typefaces of the 1860s look as unlike Roman letters as possible.  Armed with the aids I've shared in this post, I will make a second attempt at deciphering the local German newspaper of his day.  I think I'll translate "enlistment," "Meinzen," "soldiers" and other words that may have been used to publish an enlistment announcement into German, then find the old German letters for the words.  I am ever hopeful of finding more about Henry.

For readers hoping to translate old German script go to Helps for Translating That Old German Handwriting.

Copyright ©2010-2016 Nancy Messier for My Ancestors and Me
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Helps for Translating That Old German Handwriting

Suetterlin/English alphabet

A year or two ago I requested and received some church records written in the late 1800s in German.  The handwriting was completely indecipherable to me!  I trusted that they were the records of my ancestors because the church historian who had searched the church ledgers knew the old German handwriting and assured me that they were for my ancestors.  It wasn't enough, though.  I wanted to know for myself what the handwriting said, so I looked for websites where I could learn Old German handwriting.

I realized that there are two problems with Old German documents.  The first is that the German and English alphabets are not exactly the same so I had to learn a few new letters in order to translate from Old German to English.  Second, I still couldn't read the words until I translated the German words to English.  Double work!

Depending on the age of the documents, you may need to translate from Fraktur, Sütterlin/Suetterlin, or Kurrent.  It will be fairly easy to determine which handwriting was used if you compare the letters on your document to the letters from each style of writing.

One of the resources I found very helpful was a lecture hand-out by Sabine Schleichert called "How to Cope With That Old German Script" from German Genealogical Research Service.  Because this hand-out has a copyright, I give you only the link.  I found it especially helpful because it has a chart with letters in English, Fraktur, Kurrent, and Sütterlin.  It also has the signs for days of the week as well as a chart for German symbols and words of genealogical use, such as birth, baptism, marriage, etc.  The German Genealogical Research Service may be a helpful website to you if you have German immigrant ancestors because of the links available there.

The image at the top of this post is Sütterlin from a website called Suetterlinschrift.  You can see that some of the letters are similar to their English or modern German counterparts but others look nothing like our modern letters.  I found that I either needed to practice till I recognized certain words or use a chart like this one and translate letter by letter.

At this website, write your name in Suetterlin, you can use a keypad to type letters which will appear as handwriting.  Consider writing not just your name, but other words to compare them with words in a handwritten document or to try to decipher the document.

Another site I found useful was German Script Alphabet which looks like Suetterlin and shows the letters in handwriting and in print.  While the digitization of this page is not exceptional, the information is very helpful.  You will be surprised at how different the printed and handwritten versions of the letters look.

This Alphabet Chart includes modern, Fraktur, Sütterlin, and Kurrent as well as several handwritten examples for each of the letters.  You know how handwriting varies from one person to another, right?  We all generally recognize a variety of handwriting but when translating it from another language, it's sometimes hard to tell for sure which letter is which.  This excellent chart helps with that.  Again, you might be surprised at how differently people wrote the same letters.

Handwriting Guide:  German Gothic is an excellent resource guide from the Family History Library.  It covers old German type and handwriting and includes a chart showing Roman type, German type, and German script.

If you happen to be interested in having a True Type Font of Fraktur letters, here you go!  Have some fun.  This site includes a few paragraphs of lessons about the alphabet and some specific letters as well as how to type the vowels with umlauts using the number keypad.

Beolingus is a translation site.  If you can translate the Old German alphabet into modern letters, you can use this site to translate from German to English and vice versa.

Kurrent/English alphabet

Finally, among the FamilySearch Research Courses is a series of interactive lessons on Kurrent handwriting which include handouts that you can print.  The great thing about these lessons is that no matter what kind of learner you are, aural, visual, interactive, etc., that method is included in these lessons.  They are presented by a lady with a beautiful German accent who invites you to do on-screen activities.  When you get to the site, be sure to scroll down till you get to "Reading Handwritten Records Series" and then look for the three German Kurrent lessons.

If you're translating Old German handwriting, I wish you all the best.   You will feel like you've really accomplished something by the time you're finished!

Please also be sure to read Katherine's post of April 5, 2016, Ten Tips for Deciphering Old German Handwriting, at SK Translations.  She shares some specific and helpful ways to identify differences in letters that look similar.

If you're translating Old German typefaces, Helps for Translating the Old German Typeface may be helpful to you.

--Nancy.

© 2011-2016 Copyright by Nancy Messier. All rights reserved.