How to Use This Locality List & Abbreviations
by Daniel Schlyter

The gazetteer section of this book includes several lists of the localities in Mecklenburg.

The first list gives all the localities in Mecklenburg in alphabetical order. It indicates whether the place was in Mecklenburg-Schwerin or Mecklenburg-Strelitz and gives the parish.

The term "parish" refers to the jurisdiction of parish church. The town where the church building was located is considered the headquarters of the parish. Although the church may have been named for some saint, the Family History Library Catalog refers to a parish by the name of the town where the parish church was located. An exception to this is when a large city had several parishes. In these cases the parish is designated by the city name and the actual name of the church.

Small villages which did not have their own church are designated as belonging to a particular parish. Over time, some villages may have belonged to several parishes as jurisdictions changed. Some parishes had affiliated sub-churches. But again, over time the parish to which these sub-churches were affiliated may have changed. The localities list is intended to help in solving this problem. This list also gives the census district and census microfilm number for those localities which have been found in this census. Example:

[Records of Gülitz (in Mecklenburg-Schwerin) are included in the record of the parish whose church is located in the town of Gorschendorf. The 1819 census for Gülitz are on FHL film 68,891 which includes the former Dominialamt and Ritteramt of Neukalen.]

If the town your ancestor lived in does not have a census film number listed it probably is not included on the microfilms available through the Family History Library. If, however, the locality is very small it might be included (but unnamed) in the census return of some other locality. You should then check for census returns for other localities in the same parish.

If a city has more than one parish the specific parish is indicated in parentheses. Example:

[Records of Ahrenshof are included in the records of the parish of St. Nikolai in the city of Wismar.]

Some parishes affiliated sub-churches which for some periods of time maintained parish registers separated from the parish register kept by the mother parish. Where this is known to be the case, this list indicates the affiliated sub-church which may have maintained records for the locality for some time periods.

Example:

[Records of Bokensee are included in the records of the parish of Schwanbeck. The affiliated sub-church in Salow at times maintained a separate parish register which included Bokensee.]

For some localities, the parish indicated in 1819 census was different from that indicated in the 1936 Mecklenburgs familiengeschichtliche Quellen. Since the date of change in parish could not be easily determined, the parish is given as indicated in the 1936 source with the earlier parish given in parentheses, thus:

This is a listing of all Evangelical parishes in Mecklenburg and all localities which belong to each parish.

This section lists the location of parishes of the Reformed Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Synagogues of the Jews.

This section includes a reverse sort of all localities in Mecklenburg. This listing is alphabetized from the end of the place name rather than from the beginning. This can be very helpful in research as it puts together all localities with the same ending. Thus you can find a listing of all localities ending with -dorf or -beck. This can be very helpful when an ancestor's birthplace is written in a record but difficult handwriting makes it impossible to discern the first part of the place name.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in this gazetteer:

Last Modified: 03 Dec 2005