24 April 2013

A German gentleman

I was watching the Australian version of Who Do You Think You Are? recently, and was interested in some information I gleaned from the episode on comedian Adam Hills.

Adam had some ancestors in Germany and they happened to mention the meaning of the word "burger/bürger"- it actually translates as "citizen" or "townsman", but means "gentleman".

I knew from my translation of German parish records relating to my Beringer ancestors that there were some burgers amongst them. So I looked back through all my records and found that Valtin Beringer, my 3x great grandfather, was noted as "burger und müller auf der Lochmühle" in many parish records regarding his children, and I also found one record where my 5x great grandfather, Caspar Joseph Beringer, was also referred to as a burger (the death record of his son Lorenz, 14 Nov 1819).

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