Hi, I’m Chris, and I’m the creator of My Pomerania. I started this site in the autumn of 2015 as more of a personal project than a full-scale website, fascinated by the mystery surrounding the origins of my surname. At the time, I was rather new to genealogy and didn’t know the resources available for Pommern. My German wasn’t anywhere near proficient and I found only a few limited tools in English. In the beginning, My Pomerania was just a way for me to bookmark helpful websites that I all too often lost track of. It was also my way of putting what I found out there to help others. After a time, I saw certain patterns develop between resources and was able to separate them into their own sections.
My Pomerania is focused towards bringing traditionally German resources to an English-speaking audience. With the former German territory now belonging to Poland, research can be rather complicated. For example, records are in the German language, but are found on website in the Polish language or sometimes indexed using Polish terms and names. The goal is to make these resources accessible to both beginning family historians and to more advanced seekers of their genealogy.
One area that makes us different is the focus on the hunt for secondary sources. Other research groups like the Pommerscher Greif have focused their efforts on indexing vital records. While we helped index some of those collections, the reality is that there are still large pockets of Pomerania that have been left unexplored due to the mass destruction of records following the Second World War. For some researchers, vital records no longer exist, leaving them with no way of tracing their lineage. No way, that is, except for guild, land, immigration, and other secondary source records that can bring more of the pieces together. This is one area we are hoping to pioneer for the better.
We are always looking for new ways to improve and innovate how Pommern research can be coordinated. Our budding Pommern Podcast gives helpful tips on research and will continue with both genealogical strategies and historical accounts of Pomerania.
The Pommern Database: Person Search is where all of our indexed records go. Please bear with us, it’s still in its infancy.
The Family Tree Search: Ortsfamilienbuch was created as a way for family historians to submit copies of their Pomeranian ancestries to help others trace their families and make connections that otherwise are hard to find. Our hope is to help bridge the gap between American immigrants and other countries. But, we can’t do it without your help.
We try to keep the website up-to-date as often as possible. (And when I say “we,” I really mean me. This is very much a one-man show.) I frequently trace genealogies of other possibly connected names. But after putting in the work, what should happen to the research if there’s no connection to my family tree? Rather than discarding it, my hope is that the information can be useful for another researcher to take advantage of. These will be entered into the Family Tree Search and sometimes posted as their own articles if there is enough to make a story about.
The long and short of it is we want to help YOU make connections with your Pomeranian heritage. Plain and simple. No strings attached. If My Pomerania has helped you in any way, we are always willing to accept sponsoring contributions to help support the work we do. However, please do not feel obligated—there are far too many websites online that charge people to access their family history. We want to be different. We firmly believe the story of your family should not be locked behind a paywall.
In closing, I would like to dedicate this site in memory of the two people who are responsible for igniting my passion and interest in family history: my grandfather Henry DeWuske and his cousin Karl-Heinz Dewuske. Through them, I was taught that family is the most important thing in life. Never lose sight of that.
Christopher DeWuske, creator of My Pomerania
