On 5/30/22 9:22 AM, Lukasz Bielecki wrote: > I see. So Platzig belonged to the Lutheran church in Elsenau and later Sampohl and records for both places are lost. Niesewanz belonged to Konitz for which the records are complete so this should prbably be feasible, but you of course need to tell me more about the particular persons to trace. > > Best regards, > Lukasz

Thanks to the research by David Dorau on the family of Christlieb Dorau, we have a pretty good idea that Albert and Christlieb were brothers and that they came from "Platzig" (other times Putzig, but I believe Platzig). So where is "Platzig"?

Platzig is in the district of Schlochau in the Prussian province of West Prussia. The following map shows West Prussia in the context of the German Empire.
And this map shows Kreis Schlochau within West Prussia:

In the research of David Dorau, he presented some data from the records of St John's Lutheran Church in Meridan:

Note the towns named: Platzig, Losen, and Pagelkau.

David also offered the following from his research:

Note the additional town name Prenzlau.

The following list of municipalities has been extracted from the WikiPedia article on the Schlochau District.

Note the four highlighted municipalities. Platzig and Pagelkau are clearly found in Schlochau, and one could argue that "Loosen" and "Losen" could be the same place. Although there is a Prenzlau in nearby Brandenburg Province, I suggest that the more famous name might have been propagated at the expense of the less familiar "Prechlau".

The information above is sufficient to convince me that the European homeland of the Dorau clan is in the Schlochau District of West Prussia, GERMAN EMPIRE. My goal would be to discover the full family from which the immigrants sprang. That means finding the parents and any siblings. Unfortunately, FamilySearch (LDS) does not report having any vital records for this district. They do have films containing School records and Land and Building Tax Books, but these are currently held in the vault at Granite Mountain.

A more accessible course of action is to revisit the archives of St John's Lutheran. David Dorau was pursuing Christlieb's history when he visited those archives so his info on brother Albert is probably incomplete. Fortunately the archivist at St John's has expressed a willingness to research this topic on my behalf (e-mail 2021JUL07) and I look forward to her report.

As regards vital records from Platzig, I would have to hire an on-site researcher, and I have yet to identify one. If I could identify a researcher, I think the Dorau clan is sufficiently important to my research to justify the expense.