Matricula Online

Page from Matricula>Fonds>Deutschland>Rheinland, ev. Archiv-Archivstelle Boppard> Garnison Köln / Ev. Militärkirchenbücher http://data.matricula-online.eu/en/deutschland/ekir/garnison/KB+I_14a/?pg=1

Are you tired of cleaning and sorting during our ‘stay at home’ time? Me too. That is why I thought you might enjoy learning about an online site for researching family history. I may have mentioned this site when talking about Luxembourg research but let’s take another look as there are records available from other countries.

Here are a few ways that I’ve made this more efficient for me.
It helps if you know your ancestor’s village. You can search specific records within a location. In German they provide information about the history of this register and what other villages were included in this register as well as the current status. Of interest to me is that there also some 17th and 18th century records that cannot yet be shown on this site. If the civil entities decide to make them available, Matricula will publish them. So, I plan to check back periodically.
There is a brief summary of what can be found in the Dalheim records and a detailed list of the type of records and dates available for this location.
As an example, here is what part of the main page looks like for searching in the registers of Dalheim, Luxembourg.

http://data.matricula-online.eu/en/LU/luxemburg/dalheim/

Heiraten = Marriages
Taufen = Baptisms
Sterbefalle = Deaths
You can see what years are covered as well as the type of records within each set of documents. When you click on the camera icon by a set of records it takes you directly to the digital records for that book. If you start looking through the individual digital records remember that they may not be in the order you’d expect so if you’re looking for a marriage from 1700, remember that when the recorder was using this book they may have a mix of marriages and baptism by years or a section of marriages and then a section of baptisms. So you may need to look through all the documents in a book to make sure that you do not miss your ancestor.
If you click on the book icon, you will get more details about what is covered within a set of registers. Here’s what that looks like:

http://data.matricula-online.eu/en/LU/luxemburg/dalheim/#

In my case I am interested in the village of [Filsdorf: 1651-1715]. If I was hoping to find a record for 1720 in this group, unfortunately the Filsdorf records are limited in this register from 1651 to 1715. By taking the extra step to look at the details you will save yourself time.
 I have given you examples of the Luxembourg registers but as noted there are additional countries. My regions of Germany and Poland are not there yet but I intend to keep checking back.

 I hope researching in Matricula Online will help take your mind off being home these many weeks. Perhaps you’ll find an ancestral document you’ve been looking for on this great site. Happy searching!