[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Lipno confirmations

[Earl Schultz]

Ken & Others,
I just want to confirm or warn that even if you get the original birth record, there is no guarantee that it is right.  My grandmother and her sister were born 3 weeks apart.  My grandmother's birth record (note that these are really baptismal records) gives her adoptive parents.  All records from birth to marriage have the adoptive parents' names.  It was only a song she taught her children to sing about her real surname plus her real surname added to her death certificate by my uncle that gives us the real information.  Only DNA will be able to confirm this although the clues are plenty.  (I will search for her real parent's descendents in the USA to check DNA.)

So, in short, birth baptismal records give the parents at the time of baptism, not at time of birth, at least sometimes.  Note that this happens in adoptions today where a revised birth certificate is issued and the biological parents' names are removed.

It is only a hobby after all.  LOL

Earl

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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:27:24 -0400
From: "K. Gallagher" <gallag.4gen at comcast.net>
To: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Lipno confirmations
Message-ID: <80DEEE6D-EAA9-48AA-9A01-DCC7224C1461 at comcast.net>
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As with any records, it should be noted that although the Lipno confirmation records are a great substitute for records that have not been microfilmed, they can contain information that is inaccurate and/or misleading.  I have found situations in which the parents named in the confirmation records were the names of the persons raising a child rather than the names of the birth parents themselves.  I learned this when  I wrote to the archives in Berlin for one particular birth record and found the child was actually born to another set of parents.  Since the birth dates of this child and another child born to the parents named in the confirmation records and for whom I have a birth record are only six months apart, the birth record has to be considered accurate.  As always, the information in any record is only as good as the record before it.  It's important to get the record itself. 

This is also a concern when someone posts a genealogy on the Internet based on information found just in the U.S. or Canada without the European records themselves.  Even the immigrant might not have known the true circumstances of his/her birth.   Of course, that opens up the question of how accurate any birth record might be.   

At any rate, cover all the bases and request the birth record itself after using the Lipno confirmation records.    

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