Luxemburger Gazette

I don't know what the Luxembourger word for Cowabunga or Eureka is, but if I did I would be shouting it from the rooftops right now. Why? Because the Luxemburger Gazette newspaper, an essential resource for anyone doing Luxembourg genealogy research, is now available as browsable-images through FamilySearch. Published by Nicholas Gonner between 1871 and 1918 in Dubuque, Iowa, the Gazette featured news of Luxembourg and Luxembourgers across the United States. It can provide critical clues to an ancestor's village and dates for deaths and marriages which took place before civil registration was enacted in many Midwestern states.

In addition to newspaper publishing, Gonner also wrote a seminal work about Luxembourg immigration, Luxembourgers in the New World. The 1987 reedition was translated from German to English and also contains an every name and place index to the Gazette. Having access to this index is the first step for using the Gazette. Check WorldCat to find a copy of Luxembourgers in the New World at a library in your area. Even armed with exact dates and pages an ancestor's name appeared on, however, using the Gazette still requires a bit of practice.

For starters, it is written in German. Google Translate can help you get a pretty good sense of what an article is about provided you can make out the text. Typical of German newspapers of this era, the Gazette used a German Gothic typeface known as Blackletter or Fraktur. (Check out this interesting history of Blackletter and where you can still find examples of it today.)

There are a variety of guides online to help you learn Blackletter and you can even download the font to your computer. An even easier method is to go to Steve Morse's One-Step web page for Converting between old Germanic Print and Cursive in One Step.

You can type in a name, or any words or phrases you are looking for and the tool will show you what that word looks like in a German Gothic type, such as I've done with the name Maggie Uselding. Knowing what I am looking for makes finding an entry in the Gazette easier.

For example, the news item on the right is an announcement about my great grandparent's marriage. It reads "Village Grafton [WI]: Married last Tuesday by Rev. W. P. Peil at St. Joseph's Church: Nicholas Ney and Maggie Uselding. In the presence of their many guests, the joyous wedding was celebrated at the home of the bride. The young couple will live in Chicago.“

The index contains the name exactly as it appeared in the newspaper so there can be variation. For example, Nicholas Ney might be listed as Ney, N.; Ney, Nic.; Ney, Nick; or Ney, Nicolas. There are fewer surname spelling variations than in the U.S. census, presumably because the newspaper's editors and contributors were Luxembourgers themselves, but it is still something to take into consideration. It is also important to keep in mind that nouns are also capitalized in German, not just proper names. Unfortunately, the perceived pro-German sympathies of the paper, during World War I, contributed to the paper's demise during an era of anti-German sentiment in the US.

In spite of the learning curve, the Gazette is one of the most important resources for anyone researching their Luxembourg-American Ancestry. I may not know how to say Cowabunga in Luxembourgish, but I do know how to say thank you. Villmols merci, FamilySearch for making this important resource available for all!