The Peasants and the Land in Pomerania

Ancestors on my mother’s side of the family were impoverished peasant farmers from Germany — before there was a Germany. They lived in a land dubbed Pomerania by the Romans. To the Germans it was known as Pommern. While at Willamette University’s main library today, I picked up a copy of Germany from Napoleon to [...]

The Thun & Milczewski Families

A few years back a couple from Montana, John and Liesel Hingst, came across some of my genealogy queries and sent me a lot of information on my mother’s ancestors, most of which I’d never known. The Hingsts had been working on an English translation of a book on Kreis Bütow. (Kreis Bütow was a county in [...]

Heinz Radde’s Site on Bütow & Pomerania

Heinz Radde, probably a distant relative, is a German man from the region of Pomerania. He currently lives in Switzerland. He has some great material on his site about the history and people of the area, including a timeline of major events. I am focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries because I am not sure [...]

History, Genealogy & Genetics Mailing Lists

Here are some of the mailing lists that I manage. Most are related to genealogy and some about genetics. My mother’s family was named Fromke and was from Pomerania, an area south of the Baltic Sea. They came from Kreis (the German equivalent of a county) Bütow, which is now in Poland. Among the surnames [...]