Reflections From the Fence: The Art/Challenges of Translation for Research, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Thursday, March 9, 2023

The Art/Challenges of Translation for Research, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow, who year after year posts "challenges" her followers to share thoughts and/or photos in whatever manner suits each individual. Blogs, social media, or just in your personal memories. I have played before, and will play along a bit this year, God willing and the creek don't rise.

This week's challenge is: Translation. She asks: Would any of your ancestors have needed someone to translate for them? Have you had to work with records in a language other than your own? The answers are Yes, and ohhhhh, yes.

Man’s great-grandmother, Charlotte, never spoke English, even tho I have been told she could understand it. She left Germany/Poland in 1888, going to Hawaii, California and eventually Michigan. Enough German was spoken in the household that Man’s mother could understand and remember some German words/phrases till her death, which was 71 years after Charlotte passed.   Needless to say, I have dealt with numerous records written in German in my research of that family.   Researching in the 1990’s required many hours of patience, writing letters, waiting weeks for responses. I used any and all help I could find, other researchers, family, and I learned to read some church records myself. Note the word, "some".

Above, Charlotte, year unknown, place unknown,

shared with me by her granddaughter,

Mildred Gehrke Stevens, now deceased.

Charlotte died 1939.

It was not easy, nor pretty, but, eventually, I learned to read enough of the old German handwriting to pull the details of some German church records, such as this marriage record of the son of Charlotte, Fred when he married Lilly Gerth in 1910.

The record mentions that Fred was born in Hammerstein. It took several years of research and letter writing and hours of studying microfilm to discover where this town named Hammerstein was located, ended up it was in Poland. It was one of at least 5 towns named Hammerstein we found on old Germany maps. Four were in Germany as we know it now, one is now in Poland.

After we determined that this Gehrke clan most likely was from an area of Germany that now lies in Poland, I had a fellow researcher, who specialized in Polish research, write letters to Poland for me, searching for records. At that time I was trying to locate town/civil records and possible church records, alas, many were destroyed by WWI and WWII. This special friend would translate my English to Polish, we would send off, when he received a response, he would translate it back to English for me.

I also had my daughter-in-law (who grew up in Germany, with a long heritage in that country) help by writing letters in German for me. She would contact archives and other researchers. At one point, she even sent documents written in old German handwriting to her mother, who in turn gave them to some friends and family that could still read the old handwriting. They translated to the best of their ability, and several translations and letters later, we had a fairly decent translation.

One such translation was a long and detailed story of the deceased gentleman, Christian Link (d. 1919), which details the date of burial, the pastor’s name who oversaw the funeral, his birth date, birth place in Germany, his age of moving to Canada, date of marriage, date he and his bride moved to Michigan, her death information, and many more details. If only all obituaries today provided such detail. For the record, this long obituary/story was found in church records.

Ah, research before the internet was what it is today, when translating records was a slow slow slug for Moi. Our friends and their knowledge was invaluable. Frankly, it did take a lot of digging to find the right person to assist and hours of learning to pick apart the records and try to read them myself. Did it teach me patience? Maybe - -