A Wonderful Surprise in the Mail!

After being out of town for a few days, I came home to a pile of mail and a wonderful surprise! In the mail was a large envelope from Gelsenkirchen, Germany with the birth records of my great-grandmother and five of her siblings. Wow!

Less than 3 weeks ago, I was on a the genforum message boards searching for info on Gelsenkirchen. Someone had posted that they were looking for records from Gelsenkirchen and wonderful man named Bill posted the address and email for the Rathaus. I sent a quick email with the Linneman names and birth dates and that I thought they had been born in Schalke or Gelsenkirchen.

I never heard back from them via email, so I was thrilled to open the envelope! The next step is to try to read these records. My mother is taking a look at them first and we will go from there. Besides my minimal understanding of German, the handwriting is very difficult to read on a couple of the papers. I am hoping that she can decipher them!

I will post more about what we learn about the Linneman family through these records later, but in the meantime, here is the birth record for my great-grandmother, Elizabeth. Click on the image for a larger view, and let me know if you can read any of the handwriting!