Bach FAQ 82

 

Did the Bachs Once Come From Papua New Guinea?

 

No, no, no, the Bachs don't come from Papua New Guinea. However, as strange or better featherbrained this question may sound in ninety-nine percent of all Bach enthusiast's ears ... for the real interested genealogists among us, this story is an exciting "adventure".

 

Today, you are not anymore looking for your ancestors just the conventional way. Which means you only check in church records, passenger lists, censuses. Like many of us, today you are doing genealogy online. Market leader with an incredible data base offer, and I am serious, is a company located in the USA. It is the genealogy portal "Ancestry.com", a real company. They offer memberships. For this fee of millions of mainly Americans, but people from many other countries as well, they buy whole databases of historic church records, passenger lists, immigration stuff and authority papers and publish it. There, when you are a member you can help yourself. Advantage is that you don't have to travel eight hundred miles to a church archive just to find out, there is no data, which is exciting for you. Those who once have spend just five hours in a County Church archive and searched via microfilm, know to appreciate the difference between "in the field" and at home at your computer.

 

However, Ancestry.com is a get-together of those, who are looking for their ancestors. From this point it's getting exciting. Are you looking for Uncle Hermann? He may be was married to Aunt Helga and somebody somewhere already found both. Including age old photos. Let's assume, you are doing research in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Some eight hours flight east Emma in Hamburg is researching too and Terri in Las Vegas, a very experienced amateur genealogist has found Aunt Helga. Plus, Emma has photos of Uncle Hermann. The collected data and parameters makes it now possible that the three of you might meet electronically and you are able to exchange your experience. This is a real win-win situation.

 

Next step. Fully automated, as we like it today, you are now able to exchange mails or the whole family trees into your own research. The funny thing is, it's coming with all mistakes too. What do I mean? If one hobby family researcher works improperly and has added a wrong great-grandfather because he thought his discovery is his great-grandfather, his whole family tree has a problem. If now somebody just "copy and pastes" so to speak this unserious researched family data, the chaos is programmed soon.

 

Now let's get back to Veit and Papua New Guinea. One person, an amateur family researcher, may be a rogue, has put in Papua New Guinea as the birth place of Veit Bach. And since that has happened, this funny nonsense has spread all over the database. We have met this hint in a lot of member files. May be one day we are capable to erase that nonsense for good.

 

So - the distance between Thuringia and Papua New Guinea is nine thousand miles. That means, the Bachs didn't come that way. Plus, for the experts among you: of course that assumption came with no paperwork, documents or any other proof.

 

 

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