a friendly Hello from Hamburg/Germany

[KatieNordwind]

Hello,

I am Katie, born on the island of Heligoland/Helgoland in the northsea.
The history of my family is associated with the various gouvernments, before 1807 the island was danish, between 1807 and 1890 british and since then german.
I started genealogy 7 months ago, when my beloved father died.
Hope you can be tolerant, because my english is in a horrible state ;-)

Greetings,

Katie

[Jan1954]

Welcome to Brit-Gen, Katie

I see that you are finding your way around the forum and I know that the members here will offer every help that they can. As you have been following your family history for about 7 months, you may find these pages of help with what is available for British ancestry.

There is no need to worry about your English as, from what I have seen so far, it is very good. (Better than my German....)

[BayHorse]

Hi Katie.

Your English is excellent - don't worry about that! Very sorry to hear about your father though (hug).

They are a friendly crowd on here.

[KatieNordwind]

thank you so much for the warm welcome!
I am lucky, the best friend of my father is my private genealogy expert, he transliterated everything he could get into a online Database, even the old parish registers.
So my family-tree with about 1500 people was still a lot of work, but not so hard going through, if you have to crawl through the records.
The brickwalls are still there...hope to get through them, or find a way around them.

[wildernis]

Hi Katie,
I have just joined this site which I found following all links regarding Helgoland. My great-grandfather Robert Rosenthal was born on the island in 1862/3. He moved to Poole, England about 1880 and my first record of him is when he married in 1884. I am hoping to find any information I can. I wondered if you had had any luck with your search...and hopefully discovered something that I might find useful too?

[Sparklingsilver]

Hello Katie,
I am hoping you may have found some information about inhabitants of Heligoland that could be useful to me. I am trying to trace Charles Roberts son of Henry (Heinrich)born on the island in 1837. Discovered in England in 1851, aged 16. He spent his whole life as a seaman and married in 1857 and had sixteen children.

[Lesley Robertson]

I’m sorry, but Katie is no longer a BG member. you can see that from the “guest” tag under her user name. We can’t keep contact data for ex- members, so she won’t see your message.

[Pam Downes]

Sparklingsilver -
Sorry, but this is a very old thread, and Katie is no longer a member of the forum, as denoted by the word 'guest' under her username.
We have no contact information for her.
However since 2013 very many more records have been made available online, so I did a search for 'Heligoland birth registrations'. From amongst the first few results I found this.
https://www.online-ofb.de/helgoland/?lang=de
I'm assuming it's in German. The person who compiled the site died in 2018.

I don't like to boast about my brain cell, but I've done a click and found that it translated the basic details on the site to English.
https://www.online-ofb.de/helgoland/index.php?lang=en
Try clicking on some of the tabs across the top of the page, as well as other links. You never know what you might find.

I would also suggest that you try a internet search to 'Heligoland birth registrations' or something similar, and check the results further down the page than I went.

[Sparklingsilver]

Dear Pam,
Thank you for your kind response.
I had previously looked at both sites you found, but discovered nothing relating to Charles Roberts. He first appears in England in the 1851 Census, aged 16, and simply states place of birth British Subject. On two following census returns his place of birth given as Germany, and finally one which states Heligoland. It is perhaps appropriate to consider Roberts the anglicised version of his German name, but again I could not see any thing on the two sites to help because neither includes forenames. Enquiries to the German Embassy in Australia, by an Australian cousin, found no evidence of him in the few surviving records in the Heligoland Lutheran Church Records which ends on 10 Dec 1837.
At some point this man must have had to produce evidence of his seaman skills since he became Captain of The Tug Boat Dock in Gateshead, Newcastle. He married a local girl in 1859 and his marriage certificate states his father as Heinrich; two of his 16 children Heinrich and Hoist which again suggest the German attachment. National Archives have no evidence of him as a seaman. Stumped at every turn so far!
Kind regards and thank you again.