Today’s Surname Saturday post is an update on ancestors in Rawitsch, Posen, Prussia.

I’ve found great riches since I made it through that brick wall a little over a week ago. This has been like a lock where only one key –  the village where my great-grandfather was born – unlocked so many other answers. Without it, I’d still be wandering around the nearby city where I thought he was born.

More Ancestors in Rawitsch

I’ve identified 64 more ancestors in Rawitsch, Posen, Prussia. I’ve made it back to the very late seventeenth century, finding two sets of my six-times-great-grandparents. New surnames in my Prussian family tree include GUERTLER, BRAND, METSCHKE, GLAUBITZ. My new favorite name to search: BREDTSCHNEIDER.

Oddly, there don’t seem to be any KIRSCHSTEINs in Rawitsch before Bruno’s father, Friedrich, was married there in 1847. But the families he married into – the BRAUNs and the TRENKLERs – had been in Rawitsch for a very long time.

That honey of a record above is the parish register marriage entry for my 5-g-grandparents, Samuel Trenkler and Johanna Susanna Theodora Guertler, on 12 Sep 1757 in Rawitsch.

Resources Used to Find More Ancestors in Rawitsch

The FamilySearch site, with the Germany Births and Baptisms and Germany Marriages databases, has been invaluable. An incredible 37+ million records are found in the births and baptisms database. Another 8,521,324 records exist in the marriages database. All entries have Family History Library microfilm roll numbers for original records.

Have you had good luck using these FamilySearch databases? What other resources have helped your German or Prussian research?

So, no new blinding insights or big tips today. Just continuing to hoover up those new ancestors as fast as I can put them all in my family tree!