A couple of years ago my Dad and I began sifting through a treasure trove of family history that we had received, piecing together the story of our earliest ancestors in the U.S. Among these materials were many original documents in German, dating from the decades 1840 to 1870. These documents proved extremely difficult to translate, as documented elsewhere on this site. Nevertheless using various tools I was able to put together transcriptions and translations of many of the official Bavarian documents. I find these immensely interesting, and I hope they are useful not just to curious members of our sprawling family tree (Alois had ten children with two wives, the majority of whom survived into adulthood) but perhaps also to anyone interested in 19th century German writing and emigration stories.