On the census my ancestor gave his country of origin as "Hanover". This was a Kingdom ceded to King James of Scotland for the hand of his grandaughter Sophie in marriage. The borders changed during British rule until about 1900 when it became part of Germany.
The state are slowly putting names and the reference numbers of the emigration archives from Hannover,
Osnabrück, and Wolfenbüttel. The following explains something about using the archives:
Searching the Osnabrück, Hannover, Wolfenbüttel emigration records is done by going to the website:
http://app.staatsarchive.niedersachsen.de/findbuch/
It is a little confusing to use, especially if you don't know German. On the first page:
Choose one of the three locations on the bar (look for the arrow to show the areas) & click "Abschicken"
Go to "Index" in the middle of the page and click
Fill in the surname you are looking for in the box "Suchbegriff"
Choose "Personen" where it says "nach Ort"
Click on "Suchen starten" and you will get a list of persons who emigrated from Niedersachsen with that name. Or you may get nothing! Try the same search on all 3 locations.
Note the number on the right column. That number will direct you to the town later. Click on a name that matches a person you are looking for and you will get a code that will be what you use to order the record.
Finding what area the person comes from is not easy. On the Hannover site, it usually names a town right in the code.
For Osnabrück it is harder, although it sometimes names the town or part of it. Don't presume anything about the town . You need to go back to the page where you first
clicked on Index and this time click on Gliederung.
There you will see a list of towns and if you click on the numbers on the left, you will get a listing of the numbers of people who emigrated from that area. The numbers start with 1 and go up from there. So if the number
is 5 digits it will be closer to the bottom of the list. But you have to go to the one that has the number in it from the right column of the page with the list of names. When you find the right one, the code will match the code you saw earlier tied to the name you were looking for. I know this is confusing. Then, you can order the records from one of the 3 locations. The email addresses are:
Hannover -
poststelle@staatsarchiv-h.niedersachsen.de Osnabrück -
poststelle@staatsarchiv-os.niedersachsen.de Wolfenbüttel -
poststelle@staatsarchiv-wf.niedersachsen.de You have to realize that these emigration records cover only certain years--and not everybody is listed there. None of my relatives are. You're lucky if you find them!!
I would not order records until you know whether it is your ancestor. You can always write to the addresses given above and maybe they can help you.
Rena