Microfilm of the records of the Evangelische Kirche in Züttlingen, Germany arrived this week, and I spent 3 1/2 hours at the local Family History Center looking through film #2271090 this morning.

It was confusing and daunting and overwhelming, even though I speak some German. To begin with, the reel started with some 17th century family books (Familien-register), which hadn’t been mentioned in the film notes. The handwriting was miniscule and heavily overlaid on the page, and there was a lot of Latin! I kept scrolling through and eventually realized that the records were not from Züttlingen but from a nearby town named Widdern. Luckily I kept scrolling and eventually came to records from Züttlingen. (And the family books from Widdern seemed to be arranged alphabetically — I hope this is true for the records from Züttlingen also …)

Even once I was at the records from Züttlingen, I still felt at a loss. There were some pages that didn’t look like anything I’d seen in the online course that I had taken — Lists of people and dates. Later, when I looked at the film notes for the reel, I tentatively identified them as “Kommunionen 1778-1785”.

Still, I made some progress. I found some Eberleins in the lists of people being confirmed; it seems that groups of 14-year-olds were confirmed in the spring of each year:

• 1803: Christina Eberlein, c. 1790 Mai
• 1806 Jos. [not-yet-deciphered] Eberlein, c 1792
• 1808: Christophe Gottlieb Eberlein, c. 1794

I have no idea (yet) where these people fit in with my great-great grand father and his family — perhaps siblings of his father?

I also came away with two printouts of partial pages from a register of birth and baptismal information. These are partial because I did not realize that the record spanned both pages of the register. (Did I mention that I was overwhelmed? Having an empty stomach didn’t help, either.)

I’ll start with a screen capture of the column headers; click the image if you want to see it in full resolution:

From left-to-right:

• Name des Kindes — Name of child
• Eltern — Parents
• Ort von Geburt — Place of birth
• Zeit der Geburt — Day and time of birth
• Ort, Zeit der Taufe — Day and time of baptism
• Taufzeugen — Godparents

And here is a screen capture with the actual, albeit partial information for a sister of my great-great grandfather:

Here’s a first attempt at a transcription of the record:

• Johanna Magdalene Rosine
• Friedrich Albrecht Eberlein, Bürger u. [?] ins Züttlingen ux. Eva Catharina, geb. Ullrichin
• Zütt-lingen (broken across lines)
• 1829 1. Januar [?] 9-10 U.
• Zütt-lingen [?]
• 1) Georg Malthes Eberl…
  des Geo. Malth. Eberle …
  2) Magdalene Ehefr…
  [?]
  3  Joh. [?],
  4  Rosine, Ehefrau
  [?] des Züttlingen

Lots to mull over here — I’m looking forward to my next trip to the Family History Center.

Things I learned:

• Expect that your first encounter with German church records will be overwhelming. Don’t expect more than to get a sense of what is on the reel.
• Start with the Familien-register. If you find a record for the family, you’ll have dates and names and — very important — a sense of what the names look like in Deutsche Schrift (German script). I was lucky in that I had a extract from the Familien-register that relatives got from the church pastor back in 1951, so I had a starting place.
• If you have materials that show the names of your people in old script — photocopies, photographs, whatever — bring them, as well as a cheat sheet of the alphabet. You can download PDFs of the alphabet and sheets for practicing writing the letters (the best way to learn them) from the BYU German Script Tutorial.
• Print off a copy of the Family History Center notes for the collection. (I didn’t, and I needed it badly as I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing.)
• If you find materials about your people, print copies as you go along. Take the microfilm off the reader without rewinding it, so you keep your place. (I had no idea that this was OK to do …)
• If you are overwhelmed with the content, print copies of representative pages. Take them home and decipher them.
• Use a camera to take photos of the microfilm as it is displayed on the reader.

Overall, I’ve made progress. Good progress — more than I thought before I began writing this post.