Scott County Iowa Genealogical Society and the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center of the Davenport Public Library invite you to their monthly meeting.

For our February presentation, we invite you to attend a program on German genealogy research. Are you trying to cross the pond to Germany, and you don’t know where to research because the homework has not been completed?  Have you looked at EVERYTHING in the area where your immigrant ancestor settled?  The critical clues can be found in the most unexpected of sources.

About the Speaker: Mike Wedell began his genealogy journey as a child helping his parents and maternal grandmother look for ancestor tombstones in a small Iowa cemetery. Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, he was an early adopter of computer technology and moved his parents' research to the family’s first IBM PC home computer when he was in high school.

He took his first leap “crossing the pond” to Germany when he started to research his wife’s genealogy 35 years ago. The breakthrough occurred when he found a letter in records from a small Illinois courthouse from Germany. The father wrote this letter to the local district court, giving his son permission to marry as a minor.  Since then, Mike has been able to find all their German ancestral villages in Bavaria, Hessen, Rheinland, and Thüringen.

Since that time, Mike has developed a passion for assisting other genealogists in finding their ancestral villages and advising cousins with unexpected DNA results to discover their parentage.

Mike is the Vice President of the Muscatine County Genealogical Society.  He has goals tied to expanding the society membership and offering beginning genealogy classes to the community.

This program is scheduled to be held in person and virtually. The program will be held at the German American Heritage Center and Museum, 712 W 2nd St, Davenport, IA 52802.

For access to the program recording, please follow this link: https://youtu.be/r1yMJWT4jFo.

This program is suitable for adults and teens.