Hello,
Can anyone help me?? I don't know where to start looking { and I can't read German} for my family from Silesia.
I am looking for information about
Gottlieb and Maria KIEFEL. They had a son { and possibly other children} Johann Gottlieb.
Johann Gottlieb KIEFEL b 1785 married Anna Rosine KANNBLEI. They had 3 children that I know of :
Caroline Augusta, Johann Samuel Hienrich b 1834 Jenjau Krei Liegnitz Silesia and Anna Caroline Louisa.
The family migrated to Australia in the 1850's. Johann SH KIEFEL married Johanna Christiana FIEGERT on 16.3.1860 and they had 11 Children { all in Australia}
I am looking for information abut this family but don't know where to start looking. Any help would be much appreciated.
Alison
Australia

Allison,
congratulations on locating your family to silesia at least. it took me 10 years to do that! here are a few websites you might want to check out:
http://www3.adnc.com/~lynnd/gfaqm.html

http://wiki-en.genealogy.net/Schlesien

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/fhlcatalog/supermain...

there are a lot of resources out there. once you are sure you know the town, you can order the church and civil records on microfilm from the Latter Day Saints family history library. that is where i found a treasure trove of info about my Silesian ancestors. but the records I found only went back to 1800. the German and Latin script is not that hard to read. i did purchase a book by Edna Bentz that made it very easy to decode. and i speak some German so the language used was not indecipherable to me.

if i have some more time, i will see if i have any other good resources i can send you.

Best of luck!

Thank you so much for that I will check them out
Alison

Allison, I think the village you are looking for is Jenkau (German) or Jenkow (Polish). Here is the geography. another message to follow.

Jenkau, Jenków 213.4 miles WSW of Warszawa 52°15' N 21°0' E
http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~shtetlexp...

you can see it on google maps here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

Allison,
I could not find any records in the LDS library pertaining specifically to Jenkau. But it was a very small village.
I did find these church records from a town nearby in the same time period. They are "Evangelische" which is what Germans call the Lutheran church. Do you have any idea whether they were Lutheran, Catholic, or Jewish? It is possible they went to church in another town, but admittedly it is a longshot. Taufen is baptism. Heiraten is marriage, and Tote is death. You can order this film from your local LDS family library. but you may want to zero in more.

Title
Kirchenbuch, 1818-1846

Authors
Evangelische Kirche Groß Tinz (Kr. Liegnitz) (Main Author)

Notes
Mikrofilm aufgenommen von Manuskripten im Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu.
Evangelical parish register of baptisms, marriages and deaths in Groß Tinz (Kr. Liegnitz), Schlesien, Germany, now Tyniec Legnicky (Legnica), Wrocław, Poland.

Subjects
Germany, Preußen, Schlesien, Groß Tinz (Kr. Liegnitz) - Church records
Poland, Wrocław, Tyniec Legnicky (Legnica) - Church records

Format
Manuscript (On Film)

Language
German

Publication
Salt Lake City, Utah : Gefilmt durch The Genealogical Society of Utah, 1971

Physical
auf 1 Mikrofilmrolle ; 35 mm.

Film Notes
Note - Location [Film]
Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1818-1820, 1822-1825, 1827-1832, 1845-1846 - FHL INTL Film [ 890920 Items 2 - 15 ]

Thanks for that. They were definitely Lutheran.
Alison

Allison, I did find some stuff on your family, but maybe too big to post it all here. If you send me your email, I will email you the file I pasted it into and the URLs where I got it. mine is lilkidneys@gmail.com

here is something posted on Rootsweb by someone who may be related to you:
ID: I95419097
Name: Anna Caroline Louisa Kiefel
Given Name: Anna Caroline Louisa
Surname: Kiefel
Sex: F
Birth: Abt 1842 in Jenkau, Liegnitz, Preussen, Germany
Death: 1929 in Green Lake (Near Horsham), Victoria, Australia
_UID: 34CE77FB929B48F1AAB12FB9E5937F6377E9
Change Date: 26 Jan 2009 at 10:14
Note:
for more info see
http://homepage.mac.com/graememoad/Family/PS19/PS19_229.HTM


Father: Gottlieb Kiefel b: Abt 1786 in Preussen, East Germany
Mother: Anna Rosina Kannblei b: Abt 1802 in Preussen, East Germany

Marriage 1 Johann Carl Wilhelm Peucker b: Abt 1839 in Preussen, East Germany
Married: 1867 in Victoria, Australia
Change Date: 26 Jan 2009

Allison,
from the looks of things, the major source for all of the info on the web is this book:
Elizabeth Huf, Courage, Patience and Persistence, St Michael’s Lutheran Church, Tarrington, Victoria, 2003

If you can get hold of that, I think it will provide a lot of information on your family and those related to you.