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Archiver > GERMAN-TEXAN > 2000-10 > 0970901824


From: Dave Crane <>
Subject: [GER-TEX] Re: Mammen birth lookup
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2000 01:57:04 -0500
In-Reply-To: <005a01c02fe6$24535b00$dce12ad1@ruthspc>


At 06:38 PM 10/6/00 -0400, Ed Mammen wrote:
>Is a place on-line to find German-Texas vital statistics info?
>I'm looking for birth information for Elise Mammen, born 1858
>but I don't know in which Texas county. Thanks for your help.
> Ed Mammen

No, vital statistics were pretty hap-hazardly collected at the county level
in Texas before the early 20th century. After that, they were required to
be filed in Austin. Austin is slowly putting their records on the
Internet, but they started with recent material and are working back in
time. (See the references to "records" on
http://www.hal-pc.org/~dcrane/txgenweb/ ).

Your best bet is the Federal census for 1860 through 1880. You won't find
her given name before 1890, by which time she was probably married. But you
will narrow down the number of counties you have to search and write to for
Mammen families. Most good genealogy libriaries have books that index the
early census records.

I didn't find any Mammen in either Geue book. That just means the Geues
never ran across a record with that name in it, like a passenger list. I
don't believe they used the census records.

I gather you have looked through all the big genealogy sites, like
familysearch.org and rootsweb.com. Rootsweb has a metasearch now that is
very valuable for names that are relatively uncommon. I even found a hit
on "Edwin Mammen" in Chappell Hill, NC with the same email address as
yours! This family went to Paducah, KY fairly early in their lives?

A Texas birth in 1858 suggests her parents immigrated through Galveston,
perhaps through Indianola, too. The 1860/1870 census will probably turn up
a few Mammens in south Texas along a line from Indianola to Medina county.
There is still one Mammen in Beeville today. You probably have similar
clues in your family's verbal history.

You might also want to consider the possibility that the family really
didn't settle in Texas. Maybe they just landed there and passed through.
Or maybe they headed that direction and stopped in New Orleans, instead.
Lots of families migrated up the Mississippi around that time and settled
in Missouri, Iowa, and Tennessee

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