I just attended an Oktoberfest Dinner at the German Tourist Board office in New York, where part of the presentation was a new promotion campaign targeting the millions of Americans who are of German descent. German immigrants have been coming to America since the founding of Jamestown in 1607. 

There is a Web site, GermanOriginality.com, that will be accessible through the Church of the Latter Day Saints’ geneaology site Familysearch.org, the largest repository of family records in the world.  

Bremerhaven and Hamburg are also targeting Americans researching their family history through their recently developed German Emigration Centers. These centers are located in dock areas from which emigrants boarded ships for the U.S.A., Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia.  

The Bremerhaven center is located in a new purpose-built building in the dock area of Bremerhaven. There you can access the records of the 7 million people who left Germany through Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974. So a person can find an ancestor’s name on the actual boarding pass lists that are part of the museum’s archives.  

Researching one’s ancestors, either in America or overseas, is just another good reason to travel. When you find records of your forebears in foreign lands, it gives you a more meaningful experience of that country. All of a sudden that country’s historic events, which your ancestors lived through, become important to you. We are all the offspring of survivors. There have been horrific events throughout history. How your ancestors survived those trials and tribulations is part of who you are. Somehow our ancestors made it through the 30 Years War, the 100 Years War, the persecution of the Huguenots in France, the persecution of the Catholics in England, the pogroms, the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and the ultimate test of survival, WWII and the Holocaust. Travel makes it hit home.

— Dick Evans, vice president