New history website

From the NEHGS eNews, Vol 8, No. 39:

Television for Genealogists Available on the Internet

A new website has just launched giving The History Channel competition for the attention of genealogists. RootsTelevision.com is a website that provides videos of interest to genealogists, historians, and others interested in the world of the past. The website currently offers several videos, including a five-part interview with Hank Jones, author of Psychic Roots, and the second Ancestors series from PBS. Viewers can also watch videos of the recent press conference in New York City about the discovery of Annie Moore, the first passenger welcomed at Ellis Island.

Videos are currently available for free, although pay-per-view videos will be offered in the future. Find out more at http://rd.bcentral.com/?ID=4552959&s=145791043.

Emigration records of Baden-Wuerttemberg

I just found this well-made site of the Landesarchiv Baden-Wuerttemberg (State Archives), that includes a database of emigration records that can be searched. Unfortunately, Franz Geyer and Josef Freund, who emigrated in 1876 from somewhere in Prussia, were not in it, but maybe your ancestor is. The information in the database comes from the archives of Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Ludwigsburg, Sigmaringen, and Freiburg. Also on the website is an interesting section with short articles on the crossing and some famous emigrants from the area (such as John Jacob Astor).

The Ideal German Wife

In "The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin" by H.W. Brands ( a book I recommend not just as a biography of Franklin, the author also gives inciteful descriptions of the way life was in Franklin's time) , the author writes that there came a point in the 1750's where the Pennsylvania Assembly worried about the integration of the German immigrants and the English colonists (sound familiar?). Peter Collinson suggested that intermarriage between Germans and English be subsidized. Franklin said this would never work, because:

The German women are generally so disagreeable to an English eye that it would require great portions to induce Englishmen to marry them. Nor would German ideas of beauty generally agree with our women; dick und starcke; that is, thick and strong, always enters into their description of a pretty girl, for the value of a wife with them consists much in the work she is able to do. So that it would require a round sum with an English wife to make up to a Dutch man the difference in labour and frugality.

No wonder Rainer was all into me ;-)

So I guess if we have German ancestors, we can assume the women were probably dick und stark (I know in my family this trait has been passed down to the current generation despite the addition of tiny asian person genes).