Genealogy Jottings

Recently my husband/tech advisor made an exciting find. Unfortunately, it was in German. Fortunately, modern technology offered a simple way to translate the information into English. Here is his story:

Isn’t modern research wonderful . . .

This morning I had 15 minutes.  I was researching an ancient possible ancestor – Tietze Von Rashke, born about 1450 in Germany (yes, I know – not relevant).  Google Search only turned up one find:

I went there, and sure enough, there was a page of a book printed in 1845 that Google had scanned – in old German:

 

That sure looks like my name, but the search engine would only show that one page – and it looks like it goes on.  And, of course, I can’t read it.

 

Enter the wonderful technology.  Of course, it already helped me find this, but WOW.

 

On the left side, it said this was an eBook and it was free.  I clicked on the red button and Google Play came up and I logged in and “bought” my free book.

 

Of course I clicked read.  And I knew I needed page 72, so scrolled right to it.

But it was in German – old German – and I don’t read it.  The book information had said that this was a scanned book and was stored as a set of pictures, so you couldn’t scroll like a regular book.

But – they had highlighted the name and found it, so I wondered.

I attempted to “select the paragraph I wanted – and WOW – technology magic exists!  Here’s what happened:

 

When I clicked on Translate, here’s what I got:

 

After working through the next couple of pages, I found confirmation – and new relatives – of four generations of descendants from Tietze Von Raschke as the book proceeded to describe how the land had been passed to the current – in 1845 – owners.

Boy, I sure couldn’t have ever done anything like this in a morning 5 years ago!