For example, I recently learned from church marriage records (which I'll write about in a future post) that the names of my 4th great-grandparents are Clemens Steimer and Barbara Eid of Wiesbach, Germany. I know I just stated that in a matter-of-fact manner, but I was definitely doing the happy dance!
After that great news, I didn't want to stop there, so I quickly searched for Clemens and Barbara on FamilySearch. No luck. Ancestry family trees? Nothing. So as I said at the beginning, my favorite go-to website is Geneanet. I'm not even a paid member, and I still love it. I did pay for a year or two but decided to take a break and use the money elsewhere. With some patience, you can still get to some of the same information, particularly the family trees. When you're a free member, you can only search on surname (not given name), so you usually have a lot of results to sort though. That's where the patience comes in.
Anyway, I found a tree that lists Clemens Steimer with his birth and death information, along with his second marriage to Barbara Eid. And the tree goes back another six generations to 1600. I would still need to locate the German records to verify these names, but it's an exciting thought that this information could be accurate.
You can also set up surname alerts in Geneanet, which works best for less common names. The site will email you a list of any recently added matches so you don't have to sift through the entire database again. You should check it out. And don't ignore information just because the contributor didn't provide sources; it may help you pinpoint where you need to look for your family's records.
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