Klein Rambin, Belgard – Land Records (Grundbücher)
Klein Rambin is a place that is very near and dear to my heart. As the former residence of quite a number of my ancestors, it was previously difficult to research any further back. The civil registry started in 1874. Church books, however, are heavily fragmented and exist only from 1824-1848 for the church in Arnhausen. Within that surviving book, there are only a few years that have records for Klein Rambin, as they were duplicate records that were submitted. Unfortunately, the only other church records of any value seem to have been lost, although a microfilm of the original still exists from 1696-1759. This copy is is extremely poor shape, and most of the entries are too dark to make out entire lines of text. It is lucky that this book was microfilmed in 1938.
The Klein Rambin Grundbücher, however, help to fill in a great many of these gaps caused by record destruction.
The first entry mentioned in these books is for the Schulz, Michael Gehrke and his family. After his death, his wife, Anne Christine Klitzke, remarried to Ernst Carl Gottlob Weiland. He was the new Schulz in Klein Rambin. It does not appear that they had any children of their own. Michael Gehrke’s children, however, permeated the small village. Some eventually spread outwards from there to Belgard Stadt, Berlin, and the Midwest in the United States.
Other families of prevalence include those of Johann Pollnow, whose son, Georg Friedrich Pollnow, married a Gehrke. His wife was certainly related to the above-mentioned Gehrke family. The degree of relation is still something of a mystery but has been substantiated by DNA testing.
A few of the other names that appear in these registers for Klein Rambin include: Lemke, Priebe, Holz, Adam, Ziemer, Gutz, and Raddatz.
Overall, these books are essential resources for genealogy in Klein Rambin. The level of detail compared to other books is remarkable, and they offer much hope to those researching this small village.
This collection has not been transcribed yet.
Help us make these records more accessible for researchers worldwide. If you can read old script, we would love your help to make the entries in these books searchable. Please consider donating your time, even if it's just for a few pages. (We also use Google Sheets so you can see where the last person left off and where the work needs to be continued!)
If you're interested, please send an email to [email protected].
