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Background
Town genealogies are known by various names, including “town lineage book,” “local heritage book,” “one-place-studies,” “Ortssippenbuch (OSB),” and “Ortsfamilienbuch (OFB).” This article will use the term “town genealogy” and the abbreviation OFB when referring to compilations that include all or a large part of a town’s population. An Ortssippenbuch (town lineage book) or Ortsfamilienbuch (town family book) includes birth, marriage, and death data for all persons found in the local records during a specified time period, compiled into families. Sources may include the local parish registers, civil registration records, court and land records, and sometimes published material. In the printed book, this information is then arranged in a standardized format, usually alphabetically by surname and chronologically by marriage date. Family entries are identified by sequential numbers. Ortssippenbücher usually end at the time very near to publication, which means that they can run all the way up to the present. They will go back in time to the earliest records of that locality, so the starting dates vary considerably. In general, the dates begin in the 16th or 17th century, but some go back as far as the 15th century, as do those from the FS Library. A number of symbols for events are used to save space, such as * for birth, ∞ for marriage, and + for death. Abbreviations will also be used. "Häuserbűcher," or house books, are a variation on town genealogies. These books, which are usually arranged by house number or address, list successive home owners and their families. Renters and others who did not own their homes may not be included in such a compilation. A few house books have also been published on the Internet.

There are two categories of online resources:
 * (1.) Bibliographies of printed and digital town genealogies and parish register indexes. Several major collections, grouped geographically, are listed below.
 * (2.) Town genealogies and parish register indexes fully searchable online. Some are digital versions of previously printed books, but most were created for the Internet.

An online town genealogy may be a work in progress rather than a complete reconstitution of all local families. The preface usually explains the status of each compilation. Some books (i.e., the OFB Schlesisch Drehnow) have been created to provide a gathering place for information about families from a particular locality where few original sources, such as parish registers, survive. In this case, they function more like a database than a traditional town genealogy book. Users can add information to a book or make corrections by contacting the book administrator or webmaster.

Online Resources

 * Online Ortsfamilienbücher - [[Media:1-Online_Ortsfamilienbücher-Instruction.pdf|Instructions]]

Bibliographies

 * Central Office for Person and Family History
 * Available in their archive in Frankfurt am Main-Höchst, is listed as Local Clan Books
 * Alphabetical listing of town genealogies - former German Empire and German settlements in other countries

By Location
Baden 
 * List of Ortsippenbücher for Baden
 * Badische Ortsfamilienbücher in print
 * Evangelische Landeskirke in Baden Archive - OFBs on-site
 * Landeskirchliche Zentralbibliothek Stuttgart
 * Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg

Bayern (Bavaria)
 * 1600-1925 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images; Also at Ancestry ($)
 * Ortschronik zu Bayern Genealogy and house chronicles in the area north-west of Munich - parishes around Dachau, NW of Munich; surnames found in most parishes of the area - index
 * Tax Lists - Indexes to tax lists for the courts of Friedberg, Landsberg an der Lech, Mehring, Rauhenlechsberg, Starnberg, and Weilheim for 1612, 1671, and 1720-1721

Bremen
 * Ortsfamilienbuch Bremen und Vegesack Familiennamenliste - index
 * Die Maus - index

Brandenburg
 * Virtual parish registers for Koeltschen, Kriescht, Louisa, Woxfelde, and Vietz - index
 * Neumark portal
 * Many parish registers in this area have been lost. This portal is a good starting point for research and contains information from many other sources, such as pedigrees, town directories, histories etc.
 * Huguenot pedigrees - index (For more information on the Huguenots, see also German Huguenots Society - German only).

Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine)
 * Local history Books for Alsace-Lorraine

Hannover
 * Bibliography of Ostfriesland OFBs with purchasing information in the U.S.
 * List of Ostfriesland OFBs

Hessen
 * Ortsippenbuecher at University/Marburg
 * Central Office for Personal and Family History-Institute of Genealogy
 * GenWiki: Ortsfamilienbuch zu Hessen
 * Online books of the Hessian Family History Association

Mecklenburg
 * Local heritage books of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Oldenburg
 * Oldenburg list of parishes, emigrant database

Ostfriesland
 * Ostfrieslands local kinship books
 * Local clan books in Ostfriesland

Posen

Rheinland (Rhineland)
 * Rhineland-Palatinate Bibliography
 * Eifel region - index
 * Indexes to parish registers in the Trier region - index
 * Ortsfamilienbuch Südlicher Hochwald - index

Sachsen (Saxony)
 * Family Books of Saxony

Schlesien (Silesia)
 * Local heritage books Silesia

Schleswig-Holstein
 * - Familienbuch Suederbarup - index

Waldeck
 * Waldeckische local kinship books published up to 2008

Westphalia
 * Local heritage book to North Rhine-Westphalia

Württemberg
 * List of Ortsippenbücher for Württemberg
 * Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg

Online Learning

 * Ortsfamilienbücher / Ortssippenbücher - Get a Jump-Start on Your German Research at FamilySearch Learning Center - 4 lesson series
 * Poland Research With the Wiki Part 17 of 18: Ortsfamilienbücher for Prussian Poland at FamilySearch Learning Center