Featured image: Portrait of Charles Gottlieb Kolb, who immigrated to America in 1854.
My wife is a direct descendant of Charles Gottlieb Kolb. Charles immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1854 and settled in Ida County, Iowa. This man has many descendants in Iowa. Two certified Century Farms are still owned by his descendants, having been handed down within the family for over 100 years.
What had been lost in those years, however, was Charles Kolb’s ancestry. In this post, I will discuss how we were finally able to trace Charles’ ancestors in Germany. In the process, I’ll offer tips on using an invaluable resource that may help you trace your German ancestors: the Württemberg Emigration Index.
The Kingdom of Württemberg
The first step in tracing Charles Kolb back to Germany was to figure out exactly where in Germany he was from. Germany is a large place. At the time of Charles’ birth on 29 September 1834, it was not unified, but divided into several smaller states and kingdoms. Charles’ naturalization record in the United States, as well as other stories which had been written down within the family, revealed that he was from Württemberg. When Charles immigrated to the United States, Württemberg was its own, separate Kingdom located in what is now South-central Germany. It bordered the Kingdoms of Bavaria on the east, Prussia on the south, and the Grand Duchy of Baden on the west. Each of these countries would become a part of a unified German state later on, but were now separate.
The Württemberg Emigration Index
One wonderful thing about Württemberg is that it kept a register of emigrants from its kingdom. Those who wished to leave Württemberg and settle elsewhere were to submit an application stating who they were and where they intended to go. These records usually include the person’s full name, their home village, and birthdate. Sometimes, they also include birth records and other information which may reveal even more about the emigrant and his family.
Running a search for Charles Gottlieb Kolb in this index on Ancestry.com revealed an entry for a “Gottlieb Kolb” sharing Charles’ exact birthdate. (This search required a World subscription to Ancestry. A free search, in German, is available here.) What’s more, the application for emigration was submitted in March 1854, just one month before Charles entered the US. It certainly looked like this was our guy!
Finding the Full Emigration File
In order to find Charles’ family, however, we had to use this entry in the index to find Charles’ full file with Württemberg. Thankfully, these files, the “Auswanderungsakten,” are freely available on FamilySearch. They are organized first by district, then chronologically.
The index says that Gottlieb Kolb applied for emigration in March 1854 in Nürtingen, so we had to first find the film for Nürtingen, and then locate the portion of the film that covered the year 1854. After that, the records, unfortunately, were not arranged by month or by number. There were numbers at the top of the pages, but the entry for Gottlieb Kolb did not correspond with the number referenced in the index. The other information matched, however. Thus, after a page-by-page search, we found Gottlieb Kolb.
This search revealed that a Gottlieb Kolb born 29 Sep 1835 had indeed applied to depart for America with two companions: Karl Gottlieb Muller and Karl Christoph Speidel. Each of them were 19 years old.
Side note: These files can be more than one page long. Also, as with Gottlieb Kolb, more than one individual may be listed in the same file. Look carefully at names to be sure where your ancestor’s file begins and ends. All files are in German, and the handwriting varies in quality. Deciphering them can be a challenge for beginning German researchers.
Digging Deeper
The record revealed something else: Charles Gottlieb Kolb had changed his name when he came to America. In Württemberg, his name was recorded as Gottlieb Ludwig Kolb, rather than Charles Gottlieb Kolb. With knowledge of this unusual name change (and knowing from records in the US that he was Lutheran) we located Charles’ (or Ludwig’s) birth record:
Finding the Family
From here, we were off to the races. We knew Gottlieb’s parents’ names: Johann Gottlieb Kolb and Barbara Veil. We also, within the birth/christening record, had a reference to his family’s entry in the Familienbuch. These books, which are common in German church records, are enough to make any genealogist weep. They feature on one page all of the birth, death, and marriage information for an entire family. Gottlieb’s entry in this book featured a note stating that he had departed for North America in 1854. This was our guy!
From here, we have traced the Kolb line all the way back to the early 1700s in Nürtingen. And it all began with a look at the Württemberg Emigration Index, an invaluable source for German family history and German immigration research.