Mecklenburg Gazetteer Introduction
by Daniel Schlyter
The Family History Library has had an extensive collection of microfilmed records from Mecklenburg since the 1950s but some of these were not being used effectively. About eight years ago, I determined to prepare a simple reference work to make the collection easier to use. I was particularly concerned with the 1819 census collection. It seemed nearly impossible to find the census returns for any specific village. So, with the help of volunteers, I decided to index the localities in the census. As the project developed I decided that the resulting list of localities could serve as a gazetteer and since it was already in computer format it could be worked into a very useful tool for genealogical research. The project became more and more involved as technology gave me more resources to work with and experience gave me more ideas.
As the project finally comes to completion, the results are much more extensive than originally envisioned. This book provides a discussion of the sources for genealogical research in Mecklenburg, chief of which are church records and the 1819 census. To facilitate the use of church records, it includes a listing of all localities in the duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and indicates the parish to which each belonged. In addition, it gives helpful information about the availability of the 1819 census returns for each locality.
In 1936, a parish register inventory of Mecklenburg was published entitled Mecklenburgs familiengeschichtliche Quellen (Sources for Mecklenburg Family History) (Hamburg: Richard Hermes Verlag, 1936). That book, compiled by Dr. C. A. Endler and Edmund Albrecht reflected forty years of study by the archivist Dr. Friedrich Stuhr. It included a list of towns and villages in Mecklenburg based on information extracted from the parish registers, the state calendars, and the archival records. Such a list is called a gazetteer The gazetteer in Endler and Albrecht's book made it possible to find the most obscure localities in Mecklenburg. It also included old, forgotten names of towns including towns which no longer exist (going back to 1650). It showed to which parish each village belonged and indicated changes in parish affiliation. The complete inventory Mecklenburg parish registers proved to be of great help to genealogical researchers.
But Endler and Albrecht's 1936 parish register inventory had errors and it left out some localities. The book was difficult for most English-speaking genealogists to use because it was in German, written in the old Gothic typeface. And so, in addition to indexing the localities in the 1819 census, I determined to enhance and correct the information in the 1936 book and to make the information it contained more accessible to modern genealogical researchers.
Much of the information in this book is based on information from Mecklenburgs familiengeschichtliche Quellen. The information on sources for genealogical research comes almost entirely from there. The locality information from that source was carefully compared with Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs- Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs (Meyer's Locality and Commerce Dictionary of the German Empire) compiled by E. Uetrecht (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1912). It was further supplemented by information gleaned from the 1819 census of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
This work has taken many years, and has been accomplished with the help of several dedicated people who volunteered their time and tireless efforts. These were Laurie Miller Christensen, Inge Bork, Miriam Hall, Shirley Harmon, Ruth Pierce, and Nola Sala. It could not have been completed without their help.
Daniel M. Schlyter
Family History Library
9 February 1989
