The "Aus der Grafschaft Bentheim" Book is Now Available
UPDATE March 25, 2021: This book is provided here only as an historical reference. Since its publication, the number of Bentheimer immigrants has increased greatly. The accuracy of the immigrants’ vital data has been double–checked and errors corrected. You can find the latest information on our Emigrants List.
By the Bentheimers International Society
Long out of print, the book Aus der Grafschaft Bentheim in die Neue Welt 1640—2002: Geschichten und Daten von Auswanderern und ihren Nachkommen is now available as a free PDF download. You can get it by clicking the link further down this page.
In English the title is From The County of Bentheim to The New World 1640—2002: Stories and Dates From Emigrants and Their Descendants.
In 2002, Pastor Gerrit Jan Beuker in Grafschaft Bentheim, along with his co–authors, published 800 copies of this 445–page hardcover book about “Bentheimers” who emigrated to North America. The Aus der Grafschaft book gives a comprehensive view of its subject, including letters and stories contributed by Bentheimer descendants.
Brief History of the Aus der Grafschaft Book
Since publication, Aus der Grafschaft has been an important resource for Bentheimers doing their genealogy and learning about their ancestral homeland.
A handful of Society members have copies because they contributed information to the book. But most members haven’t had access to it, apart from when Aus der Grafschaft attends a Society Picnic.
Sometimes, when a copy of Aus der Grafschaft didn’t show up at the Picnic, it would be mentioned by presenters as “the Green Book.” In this way, Aus der Grafschaft has been like the elusive Holy Grail to many Bentheimer historians.
The book’s publication was instrumental in the Bentheimers International Society’s formation in 2003.
After a recent email discussion about Aus der Grafschaft, Pastor Beuker contacted the publisher and was able to get a PDF file of the book. He has graciously allowed us to put it on our website!
PDF Format: Lightweight, Searchable, and Makes Translating (Relatively) Easy
The hard–cover edition of the book is printed on high–quality paper stock and is quite heavy. In contrast, the PDF weighs in at around 10 megabytes (file size).
- You can search in your PDF viewer software for key words (family and town names, for example) by using the “Find” command and go immediately to where the key word appears.
- Because it’s a text–based PDF instead of a scan of the pages, you can select, copy, and paste passages of interest into a word processing file.
- If you can’t read German, you can also copy and paste passages into an online translator.
All of these features make the PDF edition very convenient, and it’s far easier than scouring 445 pages for every mention of your family’s name.
Long out of print. Now available for Free.
Authors include Gerrit Jan Beuker, Swenna Harger, Loren Lemmen, Gregor S. Santel, Freimuth Schulze, and Hubert Titz.
The book includes concise emigrant data as well as family stories and letters and history about the County of Bentheim.
Many members of the Bentheimers International Society contributed family photographs and stories.
If you download the Aus der Grafschaft book, let us know how you plan to use it! Which family names are you researching?