Using Transkribus for Old German

 

Transkribus.

Transkribus is a platform for text recognition, image analysis and structure recognition for historic documents. It is a European-developed artificial intelligence tool, with an increasing number of non-European institutions joining the cooperative behind the platform. I remember seeing them at RootsTech 2025, but until now I had used it. The old German handwriting on the documents for my current search is a perfect use for the tool.

Using an extract from the Saxony Anhalt Baptism records of 1817 I shared earlier, above is an example showing the entry for Anna Dorothea Sophia Hesse, daughter of Friedrich Hesse and Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann. Once the image is loaded onto the Transkribus platform, it takes a few seconds to scan, and the tool returns a helpful transcription into German on the right side. This can be copied and pasted into Google Translate, giving a pretty good approximation of the text.

It is free to create an account, and there are different tiers from free with limited credits, to scholar to team and organization. I'll be trying out the tool further on these German texts.

Differences in the records

Most of the records on Maria Elizabeth Hesse show her birth year as 1823 or 1824 in the 1870 and 1880 US Census. Her headstone in Edwards County, Illinois shows 1823. And yet, there's a baptismal record from Roxförde, Saxony from March 1821 for a Maria Dorothea Elizabeth Hesse, daughter of Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann of Klüden (a town 3 km south of Roxförde). Maybe this is an older sister with a similar name, or perhaps this is the right baptism record.

Source: Ancestry. Saxony Anhalt Baptisms, Marriages and Burials.

One challenge is I find German handwriting from this era to be very difficult to read. I'm much better with Spanish or French handwriting on similar records.

An earlier record from 1817 shows a baptism record for another daughter of Dorothea Sophia, this time for Anna Dorothea Sophia, on 30 March 1817 in the parish of Roxförde.

Source: Ancestry. Saxony Anhalt Baptisms.

Woman at a Window

 

Caspar David Friedrich. 1822.

The painting above by Caspar David Friedrich is titled Woman at a Window (Frau am Fenster). Painted in 1822, it is on display at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. This is a museum I visited last June on my way to meetings in Prague. The Friedrich painting features his wife Caroline as she is looking out the window of his Dresden studio at a passing ship on the River Elbe.

I share this as it is from the time when Dorothea Gagelmann Hesse was pregnant with Marie Elisabeth. Caroline may have been close in age to Dorothea, and I think this image also helps us think about Dorothea from the same time. 

Gardelegen

 

Wikipedia. Gardelegen about 1650.

Here's another view of the homeland of Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann, showing the town of Gardelegen (Province of Saxony, Prussia). It was founded in the 10th century and became a member of the Hanseatic League in 1358. The painting above shows a representation of the town in the 17th century, as fortified with a several tall churches, a town hall, and orange/red tile roofed buildings in German village architecture.

A map of the Gardelegen district and neighboring towns can be seen below. For the official website in German, see here: Hansestadt Gardelegen.

Source: Wikipedia.

In the Province of Saxony

Google Maps. North of Magdeburg, Germany.

While we await the results of our daughter's mtDNA test, it's useful to look at the region where her 6th-great-grandmother, Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann, was living between 1800 to at least the early-middle 1820s. Dorothea was the mother of Maria Elisabeth Hesse. Maria Elisabeth was born about 1821 (most trees online say 1823) in the Gardelegen area (possibly the town of Klüden), north of present day Magdeburg. This territory changed hands quite frequently during the early 1800s, and was a contested area during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).

This corner was part of the Province of Saxony (from 1815) in the Kingdom of Prussia and Kingdom of Westphalia (1807-1813). Before that, this area may have been part of the Duchy of Magdeburg (up to 1807). The map below shows some of the complexity for this area in 1812.

Source: Wikipedia. Confederation of the Rhine.

I am still in the early stages of diving into German research, and luckily there are several sessions on the topic scheduled for RootsTech 2026. In the meantime, I am reviewing sources such as the FamilySearch wiki pages on places such as the Prussian Province of Saxony.