Voelker Family Antiquities Archive

Performing genealogy research can be one of the most joyous and frustrating endeavors you can undertake.  Anyone who has spent much time at all can empathize with the frustration of repeated dead-ends and the subsequent joy at finding a small piece of data that unlocks the door to a whole new room full of information.  Most often, these puzzle pieces are bits of data that get unearthed but sometimes they take other forms.  In my own research I was very fortunate to have discovered that a set of physical documents from my earliest known paternal ancestor that immigrated to the U.S. had been handed down through generations and had survived in remarkable condition for 150-200 years.

The oldest of these documents are the baptism certificates of Martin Völker, his wife Catharina Brockhius and her brother Gerherd Brockhuis.  These links are hi-resolution scans of the originals in old German script and clicking on the images will reveal a larger, more detailed version of the documents that you can scroll through and look at.

Several other documents of Martin's including official birth certificates and military records exist as well including translations of the documents mentioned previously.  I refer to this collection as the Antiquities Archive and I regard these documents as essentially priceless antiquities that provide me a connection to my ancestors that many do not have an opportunity to have.  I have not yet begun to fully leverage these documents for extending my research back into my German heritage but I expect that they will provide me with some distinct advantages once I do.