Kattelmann Surname - Variations

Kattelmann, Kattelman, Kartelmann, Cartelmann, Rattelmann, Kettleman: If your research involves Lutheran Parish Registers (birth, marriage, death) or other German Documents, you will find the spelling of our surname listed a variety of ways. In addition, male surnames may disappear at the time of marriage and reappear at the time of death. This involves a procedure called “vulgo” where a male marries a widow who has children and an estate and takes her surname. In most instances of this that I have seen, the male only carries the surname of the female while he is alive. The “vulgo” procedure is rare, but it can cause genealogical nightmares.

Kattelmann Ancestors in Northern Germany: Villages and Parishes.

The two distinct Kattelmann Family lines that I traced, Tileke (1618-1665) and Johann (1620-??), lived for several hundred years in the area near present-day Wagenfeld, Niedersachsen, Germany. The Village of Ströhen, Parish of Lavelsloh, Kingdom of Hannover is most commonly mentioned in the Kattelmann records available on the German database “db.genealogy.net". The second most common location is the Village of Prussian Ströhen, Parish of Rahden, Kingdom of Prussia. Records for this half of Ströhen are maintained on microfilm (not yet digitized) by the LDS Church at the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. CAUTION: One village, two countries. If you are doing research using German maps, Reiseatlas Deutschland for example, the Village of Ströhen is identified as two villages separated by the boundary between the old Kingdoms of Hannover (Niedersachsen) and Prussia (WestfalenRhineland). Near the two villages is a dot on the map titled “Kattelmann.” I believe this is the intersection where the road Kattelinger Weg starts.

Kattelmann Family Farms

In May of 2007, Jim and Sandy Kattelman visited Three Kattelmann Farms (Yards No. 8, 9 & 75) in Wagenfeld-Ströhen (near Bremen), Niedersachsen, Germany. The three existing Kattelmann Farms may not be the exact structural locations of the original 1600s and 1700s farms. The Kattelmann family history in the region can be documented back to 1618 in the Registers of Lavelsloh Parish Lutheran Church south of Ströhen. It is known, however, that Tileke and Johann Kattelmann (brothers we believe), born 1618 and 1620 in Ströhen, fathered two lines of Kattelmanns that represent most Kattelmann descendants in the early Kingdom of Hannover, now Niedersachsen. In 1848, cousins from Yards No. 8 & 9 married (see family reports at db.genealogy.net) which reconnected the family lines. The third Kattelmann Farm, Yard No. 75, is where my Great-Great-Grandfather was born. All three farms are within a mile of each other.

German database - online

German database - Online with hundreds of parishes and villages. Thousands of indexed surnames.

This massive German database is presented by “db.genealogy.net”. If you are doing German research and your ancestors’ parish is included in this database, you will have hit upon a genealogy bonanza.

The first few screens are presented in German - don’t be intimidated. Follow these instructions, and by the third screen you will have the option of the English language. On the first screen, select the “Ortsfamilienbücher” tab. On the second screen, you will be presented with lists of parishes. Select a parish (listed by region), and you will arrive at the screen for that parish which has an English option.

With a village name, you can locate the parish on the Internet. If you don’t have a village name, you have a lot of work to do. Good Luck !

http://db.genealogy.net/vereine/index.php

German Parish Register Research

This German Website is very good for both the beginner and experienced researcher.

Website for Historical Research Services in Northern Germany: < http://www.hist.de/ >.

The lists of Parishes is excellent and can be located through the upper left of the Web site.

This is a fee-based organization, but the Website is deep with a lot of free information.

German Ancestry

{Jim K., Editor: Below are excerpts from an article that was posted on GeneaNet Newsletter < http://genealogyblog.geneanet.org/ > By Jean-Yves BAXTER. Accessed 20 March 2012. The article was first published in the Tampa Bay Times. Links and citations are provided to allow access to the complete article.}

http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/german-ancestry-in-us-ranks-close-to-hispanic-numbers/1219420
German Ancestry in U.S. Ranks Close to Hispanic Numbers

The United States, first populated by Native Americans, rediscovered by Europeans and colonized under the flags of the Spanish, English and French, is now filled with Germans.

More than half of the nation's 3,143 counties contain a plurality of people who describe themselves as German-American, according to a Bloomberg compilation of data from the Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey.

Digitized, Online Family History Books

{Jim K., Editor: Below are excerpts from an article that was posted on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. Links and citations are provided to allow access to the complete article.}

The following information is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at < http://www.eogn.com >. (Published 04 March 2012)

Search More Than 40,000 Digitized Genealogy and Family History Books


You can search through more than 40,000 digitized genealogy and family history books from the archives of seven important family history libraries in the United States. Best of all, it is available right now and all of it is free of charge. Every word in every book is searchable. No, this isn't on Google Books. It is FamilySearch.org, the same web site that hosts the huge databases online at the same site: FamilySearch.org.

You can perform a search at http://books.familysearch.org or click on the links to the individual libraries themselves. They are Allen County (Indiana) Public Library, Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, Church History Library, Family History Library, Houston Public Library’s Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, and the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Midwest Genealogy Center.

The materials in the collections include family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines, how-to books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees. Not all the books in all libraries have been digitized just yet. It is an on-going effort. If you don't find what you want in a search today, come back in a few months and try again. The book you seek may have been added by that time.