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Understanding Your Western European Ancestors: Becoming aware of some of the important dates in the history of your ancestors’ home country can be very helpful for genealogists. Not only can you gain a glimpse into your ancestors’ lives, you can also better understand changes in records. The events of history effected boundaries (some areas belonged to one country in one period and another country in another period), the way records were kept (changes in laws or rulers meant different formats and types of information were recorded), the preservation of records (war or other catastrophes sometimes destroyed records), as well as demographics (life spans and birth rates were influenced by outside events such as disease epidemics or birth control norms). These are only a few examples. This list below is very subjective. I’ve included only a few of the dates that I believe most impacted the common people living in Western Europe from the Thirty Years War until the end of the 1800s. This is intended for reference purpose only and is still under construction. For more information, check out the Useful Sources and Links section of this website. Try back in the future for more complete information. In addition, for information specific to Mecklenburg, Germany; Skåne, Sweden; and Buckinghamshire, England follow the links to their separate pages which contain much more historical information. Some of the details in these sections apply not just to the specific locality but to the entire country of which they were a part.
The following website has a chronology for European history: http://www.historycentral.com/WH1400-1900/Europe/Europe/Index.html |
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Important Dates