Plainview Family History Center:Friedrich Stutzmann

I would like to begin this post by thanking everyone who takes time out of their lives to help the rest of us historians out by transcribing and indexing these records. Without the index provided by FamilySearch, my Stutzmann research would literally have been like looking for a needle in a haystack, between the atrocious handwriting and 19th-century German alphabet. Most of it would have still been possible for me to find, but it would have taken me probably weeks on end as well as the better part of my eyesight, and though I will probably still have to do the line-by-line approach to find some other names I'm looking for, I am so grateful to all those genealogists out there who realize we really are a community - a family even! - and share their time and information!

My grandmother, my father's mother, was Helen Meta Stutzmann Gorry, born 1932. Her father, Frederick Casper Stutzmann, was born in New York in 1903. His father, Rudolph Stutzmann, was born in New York in 1875. His father, Friedrich, was, according to Schlegel's German family genealogies, born in Grossbockenheim, Germany on Dec. 12, 1844. Here is what I found on the microfilm I ordered from the Family History Library:

Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record is second from the top, FHL #193970.



Close up of Friedrich's baptismal record.



Friedrich's father is Peter Stutzmann and his mother is Luise Charlotte Schlick.

Can I just say that after viewing all these records, I love German meticulousness but I haaatteee trying to read the actual words. Even the few words I understand in German, like parents (eltern) and born (geboren) I can't read because the letters are so different. And don't get me started on the handwriting! The only reason I can tell that Friedrich's mother's last name is Schlick is because other records tell me it is.

Luckily, this same record can be found in the Grossbockenheim Protestant kirchenbuch, in standardized form, showing Friedrich was baptized Dec. 21, 1845:

Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record, FHL #193802.