Who Dreams Up These Rules?
Among the most frustrating things for the genealogist working in a new area are the unwritten rules, social practices and cultural norms that our ancestors followed. These behaviors are not often written down and yet they affect almost every aspect of our ancestor’s lives and the records they left behind. Every ethnic area and time period has its own unique problems. And every genealogist will encounter this problem sooner or later. I first encountered these problems when working on my Ostfriesen ancestors.

Ostfriesland is a small ethnic area in northern Germany from where all my maternal ancestors originated. Regular readers of this column have heard of the Ostfriesens before. This week we will look at some things I learned and problems I encountered when beginning my research on these ancestors. Now that I have researched in other regions and time periods, I know that similar problems exist for virtually every area...

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