Finding the Hometown in Germany of my Hork Ancestors

Many years ago in 1997, a kind church secretary sent me the page from the St. John the Baptist Church in Joliet of the marriage of my great-grandparents, Johan Anton Hork and Julia Ann Sievert on 6 June 1872.[1] It was the breakthrough I needed to research my German ancestors in Germany.

This record named both Johan Anton’s parents and the place where they were from in Germany. The writing was hard to read but with the help of an online Westphalia Rootsweb group, we figured out the town he was from was Oberhundem in the District (Kreis) Olpe.

Today, the church records of that Joliet church are now on Ancestry and I have found the records of all their children, Julia’s aunts and uncles, and cousins. I might find more when Ancestry’s full-text search includes these records.[2]

 

Finding German Records
While researching in 2010 at the Family History Library, I used the catalog to find church records from Oberhundem. Oberhundem is in Kreis Olpe, and part of Westfalen, Prussia, in the catalog. Of course, it depends on the history of the time as to who was ruling Oberhundem and Westfalen. That, I need to do more research.

Lucky for me, the first book of baptisms had an index at the front, so I learned how the capital H was made. I found Johann Anton Horock’s baptism in 1843, his sister, Clementina, in 1851, and his brother Johan Albert, in 1853.[3] What a find!

I made use of the German experts at the library to help with reading the old German script as well as using the German handwriting cheat sheet.

I continued that week searching for his parents, Joseph Heinrich Horoch and Maria Catharina Trösster’s marriage, their baptism records, and so on, looking page by page in earlier books. Of course, this was the days when we viewed these records on microfilm. Today, the records are digital, but cannot be viewed from home, so I cannot update my source citations from the microfilm. I need to do this the next time I’m in a FamilySearch Center.

I was fortunate that one, the hometowns of the bride and groom’s parents were listed on the church record, and two, the church was willing to give me a copy of the record. I am also fortunate that these were some of the German records that allowed the Genealogical Society of Utah (now FamilySearch) to microfilm.

#52Ancestors: Week 5: A Breakthrough Moment
 This is my ninth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe.

I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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[1] St. John the Baptist German Church (Church of St. John the Baptist), Joliet, Illinois, marriage, p. 13, Johan Anton Hork & Julia Anna Sievert, 1872.

[2] “Illinois, U.S., Catholic Diocese of Joliet, Sacramental Records, 1800-1979,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62097/images/62097_302022005541_0774-00035 : accessed 27 Jan 2026) > St John the Baptist, Joliet > Marriage Register, 1868-1974 > image 34 of 92, p. 12, no. 9, Joh. Anton Hork & Julia Anna Siewert, 1872.

[3] Katholische Kirche Oberhundem (Kr. Olpe), Kirchenbuch, Taufen 1826-1847, p. 139, no. 36, Johann Anton Horoch, 1853, FamilySearch Library, microfilm Intl 1257842; citing Mikrofilme aufgenommen von Manuskripten im Bistumsarchiv Paderborn. For Clementina, ibid, Taufen 1848-1878, p. 16, no. 34, Maria Clementina Horoch, 1851. For Johan Albert, ibid, p. 27, no. 31, Johann Albert Horoch, 1853. 

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