The GRHS Letters Archive

Letters from the Homeland and Sons of the Homeland

Personal letters offer a tremendous insight into family relationships, political stresses, and economic conditions that are difficult to obtain elsewhere. The letter Archive is a collection of over 2,500 letters written in the first half of the 1900's; most letters are translated from German language newspapers published in North Dakota (the Staats Anzeiger, the Eureka Rundschau, and the Dakota Freie Presse). We have letters written by people who emigrated to North America and South America as well as letters written by people who still lived in the homeland of either Germany or South Russia. Many letters request information on a lost relative and also have many greetings to family and friends long not seen. Economic conditions as well as everyday conditions are talked about in these letters. Each letter is translated by volunteers and donated to GRHS to give our members a better knowledge of the lives of our ancestors.

In earlier years the letters were published in the GRHS Heritage Review and Stammbaum publications. We have now moved our complete collection to the internet. GRHS members continue to work to locate and to translate additional letters, and we are fortunate to be able to make these letters available to GRHS members as they are made available to us. Please note that all of these letters are viewable by GRHS members only (i.e. a GRHS user name and password is required to view letters). GRHS membership information is available at this link.

Letters with a tag displayed in 'Arial Bold'  have been added to the Letter Archive since January 1, 2010. If you find a letter with a broken link or some other problem please send a message to . Please include the letter tag

View Letters Organized by Geography and Surname: Start with the following regions :  

Canada Europe Russia Central/South America United States

Select the region/country/state/province you are interested in. Once you reach the surname pages your will find all letters are grouped by the writer's surname and links to all the letters referencing that surname. Each letter code will be linked to a letter containing that surname.

NOTE: The letters in this archive have been translated by many volunteers, and GRHS makes no claims about the accuracy or style of the translations. In cases where the German has been independently proofed against the original Frakturschrift, the original German has been provided after the translation. We also ask readers to honor the copyrights of those whose work appears here.

Contributing to our Efforts :

We encourage other members, especially those who know German and have facility with Frakturschrift, to join in this effort. Those who wish to contribute letters should consult the Formatting Tutorial here. Submit your efforts to . If you do not have access to letters to translate contact us at and we can assist. A possible source of letters is an index GRHS has of over 14,000 letters published in the German newspaper Der Staat-Anzeiger for the years 1907-1925 (2.5MB)(only a very few of the letters in this index are included in our current Letters Archive)

Knowledge of HTML programming is not necessary as GRHS volunteers are ready to format translated letters into web pages. Please include a German version of the letter if possible and add whatever additional keywords you think relevant.

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