About German Roots

The original purpose of German Roots was to link to the best and most informative resources for doing German genealogy research with a focus on Americans of German descent. These resources were divided into easily searchable topics. The original site was basically a collection of my own personal bookmarks, which were becoming quite a mess. So I organized them the way I wanted on my own mini website. In October 1998 I decided to share this site with the online genealogy community and uploaded it here. In case you're wondering about the URL -- Monster is the name of my dog who is very wee.

Due to early popularity and encouragement I began to add my own research ideas to the site, which now consists of more than 100 pages of material. Many general resources have also been added. The site is especially strong for finding passenger lists, vital records, census material, and naturalization records. Many German and other records have been added and continue to be added to the site.

One of the most popular pages on the site is Finding Passenger Lists 1820 to the 1940s, which is a resource guide for finding passenger lists for any US arrival with a focus on all European departures, not just German. Included are lists of microfilmed indexes, CD-Roms, and book resources. A separate page was later added to include Finding Passenger Records before 1820 and Online Passenger Lists & Databases.

Since first joining the Internet community I have been doing an online search for my grandfather, Anthony Nelke. Assuming he had passed away, I began searching online death indexes, and collected the ones I had searched on a list offline. I decided to make this list into a webpage and it was added to the German Roots site in November 2000. It quickly became the most popular page on the site. Online Searchable Death Indexes for the USA also includes links to birth, marriage, probate and other online indexes.

Aside from maintaining this website, I am also a part time professional genealogist. I have helped numerous clients find their German ancestors. I also occasionally help out at many online genealogy newsgroups and mailing lists. I use this website almost daily as my own research assistant. I also write fiction and I published my first book, Paper Angels, a collection of Christmas stories, in August 2001. Visit the Paper Angels Website for information on ordering the book.