Finding a German Hometown

One of the benefits of testing the DNA of family members for genealogy purposes is meeting other researchers online to exchange information and expand the family tree.

A genetic match to cousins of my paternal grandmother provided me with a fantastic link, providing me with a German hometown.  (Thank you D. L.)  My cousins' Wrage line had me chasing alternate spellings in New York because of the silent W and the German pronunciation.  Without a specific place or town in Europe, finding and identifying the correct Wrage family in a German area in 1850 (if it even was Wrage in Europe) was futile.

1869 Passenger List- Hermann Wrage and son, Hermann Wrage.
This was not the older Hermann's first trip to New York.
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, database online Ancestry.com

The genetic cousin alerted me to a wonderful book online (The History of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Brooklyn, New York, from 1853-1903 by Hugo W Hoffmann at GoogleBooks) containing a picture of the immigrant Hermann Wrage, along with his birthplace, father's name, and a glimpse of his life as a soldier in Europe and then a pastor at the Church in New York.

Hermann Wrage  1831-1882

Hermann Wrage was also a published author of grammar and language books.  The advertisements for his books can be found in newspapers in the 1870s and 1880s and the actual books today are online at GoogleBooks.

Very importantly, I found out Hermann's town of origin in Europe:  Flensburg.  This is so much more helpful than working with "Germany" or "Prussia" as the place of origin.  Flensburg is currently in Germany on the northern border with Denmark.  Genetic cousins of Danish heritage in the DNA databases could be related through this Wrage branch.

Google Maps

Hermann Wrage's hometown, Flensburg, is in Germany, but next to Denmark.

23andMe: Genome of Cousin B. D.

The match on chromosome 1 with Danish and Swedish ancestry could be related through B. D.'s Wrage branch.

Next I searched for the surname "Wrage" for a geographical genealogy.  The surname is concentrated in the present-day State of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, near Denmark.  This is the area of Hermann Wrage's stated hometown, Flensburg.  I can expect to find more records here.

GeoGen Surname Mapping for surname WRAGE

Another great feature at GeoGen is the Name Graph, which provides alternate spellings for a surname.  Wrage might appear with or without the W, and could even start with a vowel.  Finding and confirming records on this line will be tricky at times, especially if the family was Danish and became German before coming to New York.

Alternate spellings for surname WRAGE

Geographical Genealogy: Germany

I have a few German lines that are quite short in my trees- only a few generations- because tracing ancestors back in Europe can be difficult.

I have been playing with a website, GeoGen, that offers surname searches in a geographical genealogical context.  You type in a surname of interest and the website generates a map showing areas of Germany where the surname is concentrated today.  This can help guide you on where to look for records, but is not proof that any of your ancestors lived in any particular place.

Let's take Clara Patschke.  She first appears in the 1870 United States Federal Census in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, age 29, born in Prussia.  Prussia does not exist anymore.  As Clara was leaving Prussia to come to the United States, it encompassed a large area of land along the North and Baltic Seas.  In the 1880 Federal Census, Clara provides a bit more detail about her origin:  Saxony.

1880 United States Federal Census
Newark, Essex County, New Jersey

Someone kindly sent me an 1877 baptismal record for a daughter of Clara, listing Clara's origin as Zeitz, Saxony.  There is a town called Zeitz in the Burgenlandkreis district of Saxony-Anhalt, which is next to Saxony, about 100 miles north of the modern border between Germany and Czech.

So we can plug in the surname Patschke at GeoGen to see where the geographic distribution of today's Patschkes.

GeoGen
Geographical distribution of surname Patschke

If we look at the area where Zeitz is located in Saxony-Anhalt, we see a concentration of Patschkes.  This is where we would hope to find a lot of people with the surname.

Next we can look for variants of the last name using the Name Graph feature.  Patschke was spelled differently on every record I have found so far.  Seeing additional alternate spellings can help me uncover more records.

GeoGen
Name Graph for Patschke