Looking for emigrants from the Rhineland?

Are you looking for your ancestors emigrating from the Rhineland area in the 19th century?

If yes, I have a great find for you. The state archive Northrhine-Westphalia has published an index of emigrants from that area.

The index contains data from the following places:

• District councils of Aachen, Düsseldorf and Cologne
• police headquarters of Aachen, Duisburg and Cologne
• district offices of: Bonn, Euskirchen, Grevenbroich, Gummersbach, Heinsberg, Kempen, Kleve, Lennep, Gladbach (today Mönchengladbach), Mettmann, Mühlheim/Rhein, Neuss, Reinbach, Siegkreis and Wipperfurth

Most of the documents are from the 19th century, the full index covers the years 1816 – 1934.

The emigration destinations are neighbouring German states as well as european and oversee destinations, especially North America. Names of cities are adapted to today’s names and writings. Also the names of the destination cities have been provided in a German translation.

Regarding the native cities of the emigrants the archive tried to verify the territorial mapping. Not an easy task due to territorial moves before 1816 and changes due to the wars 1864 til 1870/71

Source: http://www.archive.nrw.de/lav/abteilungen/rheinland/bestaende_duesseldorf/SachthematischesInventarAuswandererausdemRheinland/index.php

If you click the link above and on the webpage follow the link “Zum Findbuch 211.22.01” you will open an excel file which looks like this:

Let me just quickly explain the columns:

• A: family name
• B: maiden name
• C: first name
• D: year of birth
• E: place of origin
• F: state of origin
• G: occupation
• H: year of emigration
• I: destination city
• J: destination country / state
• K: inventory
• L: consecutive number
• M: page in the file resp. record

whereas the columns K, L and M are important if you want to order the records onsite directly at the archive.

The inventory contains 63,347 data sets. I keep my fingers crossed that you will find your Rhineland emigrants!