aka Nielsen’s Canadian Notes by George Nielsen
To view Dr. Nielsen’s original notes regarding the Canadian Wends, please click here.
The formation of the Canadian Wendish family pages was part of the research process for In Search of a Home. In addition to identifying individual Wends, the collected information could be used to show the number of immigrants, the waves of migration, intermarriage with other Wends, and the destinations. The information was limited to the first two generations of immigrant Wends and the information would include such things as the dates and places of birth and death, the date of migration, the names of their parents, and the names of the spouses. The information came from such sources as church records, obituaries, newspapers, and census records.
Because the pages were never intended for public use, I did not identify the source of each bit of information nor did I observe a high standard of penmanship. Shortly after In Search of a Home was published I received numerous requests for family history and the family sheets often contained helpful material. So I decided to make my family notes available for research and sent copies of the Australian families to the Lutheran Archives in Adelaide, the Texas families to the Wendish Archives in Serbin, the Iowa families to Cathy Petersen, and the Canadian families to Brenda Lee-Whiting.
When you encounter pages with notes written with red ink, these notes were penned while I was doing research in what was the German Democratic Republic. Information in green ink was provided by Brenda Lee-Whiting, author of Harvest of Stones.