General Information

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The ARGEWE

is a loose connection of researchers without firm associative structures.

In fall of 1999 a number of researchers decided to establish this work shop, due to personal contacts that resulted from the search for ancestors from the Westerwald region.

Our goal is avoiding double research and collecting already existing data. We would like to present these data on this web-site and encourage other researchers to join us.

By now about 600 researchers are known to us, that do research in the Westerwald region and often in same towns and families. At this point data of 169 researchers are available through our homepage, either directly installed or connected through a link.

Research in same towns with same surnames are due to repeated marriages between families, which happened in the Westerwald region as well as in other parts of Germany. This is why many families in Westerwald villages have numerous relations with one another. The reason is that in past centuries there was no infrastructure as you find today. Many people never left the villages where they were born. Family ties were stronger at that time. You were born in a town, grew up, worked, founded a family and died there as well. There were many contacts to neighboring towns, too, if they were close by ( usually one hour walking distance) The further away the lesser contacts there were.

ARGEWE does not just consider its internet-pages to be a data pool. We would also like to present interesting information and curiosities concerning the Westerwald region.

Therefore anyone, who does research in the Westerwald region is invited to join ARGEWE.