Parish records of the Innviertel, Upper Austria · read for descendants abroad
Your ancestors left the Innviertel. Their records stayed.
If your family came from the district of Braunau am Inn, from parishes such as Schwand, Altheim, Handenberg, Gilgenberg or Moosbach, their baptisms, marriages and burials are still there, handwritten in German Kurrent script. I read them in the original, translate what they say, and hand you every finding with its exact source.
Who this is for
Descendants of the emigrants who left this corner of Austria in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, mostly for the United States, Canada and Brazil. You may have a surname, a place name spelled from memory, a ship manifest, or a great-grandmother who only ever said she came from “near Braunau”. That is usually enough to start.
I live here. I know the parishes, the house names, the way the same family is spelled three different ways across two registers, and which archives hold what the online scans do not.
What I deliver
I. One record, found and translated
You give me a name, a place and an approximate year. I locate the entry in the parish register, transcribe the Kurrent handwriting, translate it into English and deliver the image of the entry together with its citation: parish, volume, page, entry number. Uncertain readings are marked (?) rather than smoothed over.
You receive
- Baptism, marriage or burial entry from the original register
- Line-by-line transcription of the German, with abbreviations resolved
- English translation with notes on what the terms meant at the time
- Exact citation, so anyone can verify it on Matricula Online
II. One family line, as far back as the records go
Starting from your emigrant ancestor, I follow one line generation by generation through baptisms and marriages, across parish borders where the family moved. You receive a report per person with every source, and the same data as a GEDCOM file for your own genealogy software.
You receive
- Each generation with dates, places, occupations and house numbers
- Every claim tied to a register entry; gaps named as gaps
- Notes on what stopped the search, if something did
- Report as PDF, data as GEDCOM, entry images as JPEG
III. The farm and the village
In the Innviertel, a farmhouse carries a name that is older than the family living in it. Records do not just say who was born, they say at which house. I add what the registers reveal about the house itself: its name, its number, who held it before and after your family, and where it stands on the map today.
You receive
- House name and number through the decades, including renumberings
- The families recorded at the house, with sources
- Location on the modern map and, where possible, a current photograph
- Context on the parish, the district and the emigration of the period
I quote each request individually, in euros, after a free first assessment. A single record is a small job; a full line is a larger one. You will know the price before you commit to anything.
How it works
- 1
You write
Tell me what you know: names, the village or parish if you have it, years, and what your family passed down. Uncertain details are fine, and often the most useful ones.
- 2
Free assessment
I check what the registers hold for your case and tell you honestly what can and cannot be found. You get a fixed quote in euros before anything starts.
- 3
Reading and checking
I work from the original scans. Handwriting recognition gives me a first pass; every line is then checked against the image by eye. Nothing goes into your report unread.
- 4
Digital delivery
You receive everything by email or download: report, translations, images of the entries and the data file. Nothing is published, nothing is passed on.
What I will not do
Guess. A parish register from 1840 is hard to read, and it is tempting to fill the hard parts with what would make a good story. I mark every reading as certain or uncertain, and I would rather leave you a question mark than invent a great-grandmother. If a line cannot be followed further, the report says so and says why.
See the standard first
My own family is the worked example: seven generations, every reading verified against the scan, every wrong turn kept in the log. The pages are in German, but the citations and the structure show what “with sources” means on this site. A second example follows one farmhouse through the registers of Schwand.
Contact
Write to me in English. Tell me what you know and what you are hoping to find, and I will reply with an honest assessment and a quote. Time zone is Central European, so expect an answer within a day or two.
- stefan.glas@outlook.com
- Location
- Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria
Legal notice and privacy policy are published in German under Impressum & Datenschutz. In short: your data stays with me and is used only to answer your request.