The German-American Genealogist Podcast Josiah Schmidt

Did you know that the "First Thanksgiving" was not actually the first Thanksgiving? Or that some of the Native Americans who greeted the Pilgrims already spoke English? Or that the Thanksgiving feast of 1621 was actually a three day celebration, and that turkey was probably not on the menu? Join us as we explore the truth about Thanksgiving, and familiarize ourselves with the German version of Thanksgiving, Erntedankfest, and its own unique customs. Our special guest is historian and genealogist Joan Shurtliff, who has studied the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving celebration and will take us beyond the traditional story.

Put away that Ouija Board. You may not need to summon the dead to get your genealogical quandaries solved. You might find the answers you seek by locating and connecting with your living relatives. There are many reasons for wanting to find living relatives--whether it's to locate an heir to an estate, to create a descendancy chart, to get memories or photographs of a shared ancestor, or to host a family reunion. In this episode, we'll tell you the best way to find them. We'll also talk to genealogist and podcaster Lisa Louise Cooke about her secrets to hunting down living cousins, how to deal with uncooperative relatives, and how to get your extended family interested in their roots.

Your loved ones aren't going to be around forever. Have you ever wanted to sit down and ask your dad about his experience in the war, or interview your grandma to get her life story, but haven't been sure how to conduct the interview and how to ask the right questions? This episode of The German-American Genealogist Podcast offers pro tips on family history interviewing from Josiah Schmidt's new book, 2000 Questions for Grandparents: Unlocking Your Family's Hidden History.

Have you ever pulled your hair out trying to find the birth place of your immigrant ancestor? Well, save your hair line, because this whole episode is devoted to that very topic. In this episode, we talk about how an examination of the first household your immigrant ancestor inhabited in America can give clues to their origins, how you can trace chain-migration, how you can find an elusive passenger arrival record, how to tell if your ancestor was a stowaway, how to use the NARA's "Germans to America" database, how to use local county history books, how marriage affected where a German couple lived, and how to use the modern-day German telephone book to help you find your immigrant ancestor's hometown.

What's in a word? When doing German genealogy, it pays to recognize that the way German words are used can have profound meaning for locating and understanding your German ancestors. In this episode, find out how and why German towns changed their names over the centuries, and how you can use this to your advantage to find your German immigrant ancestor's birth town in the old country. Join us as we learn about the unique handwriting that old German documents were written in, and about how German surnames could be spelled differently depending on the gender of the individual. In the latter half of the interview, we are joined by author Ernest Thode, writer of The German-English Genealogical Dictionary, who shares "tricks of the trade" regarding how to navigate German word structure to help you with your genealogy.

Happy Halloween! To celebrate the spooky and the macabre, this episode of the podcast is dedicated to exploring the records left behind by our ancestors after their deaths. How to find a death certificate, how to find a newspaper obituary, how to find cemetery burial records, and how to use probate records. Then, we speak with genealogist Janita (Barringer) Beals, who tells the amazing story of how she discovered that the remains of her grandfather, who had died 71 years earlier, had never been buried. Special featured music in this episode is Bach's "Fantasy in C Minor".