Where are the records for Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia?
Hi everybody, I hope you are all well.
A few months ago, I was researching the German branch of my family, who are from Remschied in North Rhine-Westphalia. I began by using the records available on the German site, Archion, which is a subscription service. Unfortunately, their baptism records only go as far as 1840.
Fortunately, I was able to find much older records and images here on FamilySearch, tracing the family back another 100 years. Today, I have returned to this line of the family and, to my dismay, I cannot find ANY of the records that I was using a couple of months ago. It's as though they never existed on the FS website. Even if they were removed from the website, it seems odd to remove them from the catalogue completely. Surely the microfilms would still be available. Is anyone able to shed any light on this?
Kind regards,
Chris
Answers
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@Chris Catling it is possible that FS has been obliged recently to restrict these records - a lot of countries have tweaked their relevant regulations lately.
@SerraNola can you shed any light please?
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@Chris Catling I will try to find out if this was an intentional restriction.
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Thank you! As I say, it seems odd to remove them entirely from the catalogue rather than just restrict access. I'll wait patiently in the meantime.
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@Chris Catling: What do you mean by "find much older records and images here on FamilySearch"?
Were these records and images stored on and by FamilySearch or by a partner organization?
To which kind of records do you refer?
When I'm doing my own research, I often find links in FamilySearch to such partner organizations as far as actual document records and images are concerned. Only a few images for my research are stored directly on FamilySearch, most are stored at partner organizations. Similarly for document records in case of my research. If you found those records and images on partner organizations, access depends on context and time. E.g. as a church member with your church account, you may have access to much more records than I have as I don't have such an account as I'm from a different denomination. And some partner organizations provide promotional times when they grant access to usually more restricted collections of records. They announce such promotions at short notice and you may subscribe to their news on their sites. The collections promoted may differ between such promotion campaigns.
You mentioned that you couldn't find any of those records that you used the time before. But you didn't mention how you searched in which information source, concluding that such information has been removed from a non-named catalogue. I understood what you wrote but not which searches you executed on which information source. FamilySearch provides much more information than just catalogues. And if your information has never been in such catalogues, then it was not removed of such catalogues. FamilySearch provides also various texts and articles to encourage different kinds of searches on different kinds of source information for records and other information. So if one kind of search does not help, another kind of search may be worth a try.
You mentioned that you found records for the time between 1740 and 1840 for Remscheid in Germany. The German State of North Rhine Westphalia didn't exist at that time. And depending on the profession of the persons concerned, people were not moving much unto the beginning of the 1820-ies in Germany, at least for most persons in Germany of my own researches. So it is likely that when you find records for some persons, the same information source may hold further records of relatives. In my own research within some German States, I found that many records provided much more information (like profession, witnesses or pastor) than just that part found in the corresponding index. This additional information may provide hints for additional searches.
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Hi @Ger876 , many thanks for your contribution. To give you some more specific details, the records I refer to are images of baptism and marriage records for the Evangelisch church in Remscheid. I wasn't aware that records may be hosted by partner organisations, so perhaps that is a possible explanation for why these images have suddenly disappeared. But no, I'm not referring to any transcribed or indexed records; just the image sets for the books in question.
Previously, all I needed to do was search for Remscheid using the 'Catalog' search function and then browse the image sets for the church records. But that option no longer seems to exist.For what it's worth, I'm not a church member either, so our access privileges are likely to be the same.
All the best,
Chris
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Hi @Chris Catling , I'm seldom using the catalog search as I've never been at the FamilySearch Library although visiting a local FamilySearch center. Most of my searches are for records although I was already trying most other kinds of searches too.
Remscheid is a city. In different eras, that city was part of different political and administrative hierarchies. So it may help to use you search for the different time periods resp. administrative hierarchies. If you have not disabled JavaScript in your web browser, you may get hints for the different administrative hierarchies to search and select the one intended for each individual search effort. In the case of Remscheid, I get 5 hierarchies proposed for Remscheid in Germany and further 4 hierarchies proposed for some similar hierarchies with some kind of affiliation to Remscheid in Germany. The latter seems to be a village Hackenberg which got later integrated into the city of Remscheid.
FamilySearch started a new effort to improve quality of locations a few months ago, as far as I noticed. Most locations are usually part of such administrative hierarchies. They may be part of distinct administrative hierarchies simultaneously. In the past, there have been such hierarchies in the numbering system of telephone service for self-dialing (phone numbers), the zip res. post code numbering plan for letters, the political State hierarchy for public affairs, the judicial hierarchy for judicial affairs, the clerical hierarchy for church affairs, and so on. In the case of Germany, all these named examples of hierarchies co-exist still today, also in the case of Remscheid. Different genealogical (amateur) researchers handle such parallelism of hierarchies differently.
In the catalog search for location, the result page starts with a note section on top before the actual catalog search results. This note section provides information on the location. In case of Remscheid, I find this political State hierarchy explained and source links offered for further research, not just for the selected time period, but for all registered periods with further information beyond those time limits in the used sources. It provides also geographic information.
You were interested in baptism. These are church affairs. So only church records and church location hierarchy are authoritative. Political State hierarchy may be attached in research documentation as alternate hierarchy, in addition to the authoritative church hierarchy. FamilySearch established the GEDCOM standard to provide the means for such documentation and also for the exchange of such information across platforms.
You were interested in marriages. Currently, there exist civil marriages and religious marriages. Relationship between both may be regulated, depending on religious affiliation. And the dates between those kinds of marriages may usually differ (often slightly) if both exist for the same couple. So depending on the type of marriage, different registers and their hierarchies are authoritative.
At FamilySearch, you'll find predominantly the political State hierarchy and to some extent also some denominational church hierarchies. If you look into the global FamilySearch tree, you'll observe that quality is very diverse resp. chaotic. FamilySearch provides various training material for users to reach higher quality in their research. FamilySearch has several campaigns to improve quality in the global tree. As I mentioned before, the campaign to improve quality of locations is one of the most recent efforts being started. The aforementioned GEDCOM standard provides also the means to document the achieved level of quality of records (per record) in a pedigree. In the global tree of FamilySearch, such details are not visible in the standard view. But for many persons such quality indications may be made visible at least at some rougher granularity. Such a quality view at record level may get visible in the global tree when certain doubts exist. I couldn't find yet a documentation for the kind of doubts, only observing some, provided as research hints.
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