I love scouring old newspapers. I hit the jackpot with Joseph Billman from Erie - German-born and Civil War veteran.

We all know sauerkraut’s a German food, and frankfurters, wieners and hamburgers are named for German and Austrian cities, but what about sauerkraut’s cousin...

English, Dutch and German are all related languages - the languages diverged - you can see it in how the same original words now differ.-

I’m typing away and I’d like to add a letter with an umlaut (two dots sometimes above a vowel)….agh

The main Celtic traditions for genealogy are the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh. Complicating matters, Irish settlers brought Gaelic from

Christine makes the journey across the Atlantic in 1950. Her daughter in Germany worries that her frail mother might not be strong enough.

Why do some family names end in -son and some in -sen?

We’d talked about how much the German dialects vary, looking at dialect forms of the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s compare High German and Dutch.

AUGH! It’s not just a cry of distress, it’s an anglicization. Why do we see lots of names ending in -augh? Baugh, Grumbaugh, Brumbaugh?

In honor of Mozart's birthday on January 27th, we look to a curious Mozart connection or two crossing the Atlantic.

I noticed that our next published blog would be #60. We've accomplished so much. Translations. Genealogy. Blogs. Presentations.

German has developed a lot of dialects. How different are they? Platt and Schwyzerdütsch differ from the standard High German the most.

How to express Yule-tide greetings in German and the Scandinavian countries - inspired by 1960s postcards. Plus examples of some Scandinavia

Why were there piles of Christmas cards from 1960 sent from around the world to a young girl in Virginia?

A Google search finds a family letter in an overseas archive showing Alois in San Francisco and corresponding with a well-known anarchist.

Are German dialects really more extreme than American dialects? Are they ever! The Old World dialects in general are far, far more extreme t

Gesundheit! Bless you? In the American melting pot, you hear bits of the various ingredients still in the mix. Here are a few examples of Ge

Sewing, in addition to laundry, used to be a responsibility that almost every woman had. And yet it can be tough to get insights into this p

It’s 1893. Chicago. Full of ambitious people eager to make their mark. Twenty-five year old Alois, trained in decorative carpentry and paint

The tribes that coalesced into Germans spoke 'the people’s/ popular language’ as opposed to Latin