Follow-up - 10 year rule
Hi and huge thanks to those who offered insight and feedback before.
Here’s where I’m at on my journey (question follows)
(Great-great grandfather = GGGF, great grandfather = GGF, etc.)
GGGF: born to unwed mother in Holzhausen, Baden 1864. Moves to New York 10/1888 with a woman that he marries 2 days after arrival. Had three kids, one of which is GGF (1891). Family lore is that they moved back to Germany sometime after the third child was born in 1893. I subsequently have a ships manifest of GGGF and two oldest kids returning to the USA in 1901. Problem is j have no outbound record. The 1901 record shows them living in Baden-Baden. I found a 1900 entry in Baden-Baden addressbuch that’s a soft match at best (same name, different career), but nothing in the surrounding years. They were not in the 1895 NY or NJ US census and the last entry in the NYC Trow books where they appear is 1892. The port of departure the US was Antwerp on every trip.
I believe I need to prove that they left the USA before 10/1898 to have interrupted the 10 year rule.
Melderegisters don’t start until Baden-Baden until 1901.
My question: does anyone have recommendations for trying to prove when they arrived in Germany and how long they stayed? I’m not even certain they were in Baden-Baden the entire time, though I do know that they had family ties there and others in the family left there in later years again indicating Baden-baden as the last residence. I have emailed the Archiv and they are going to look again, but again curious on leads.
From there, the line becomes really clean, assuming agreement that their stay in Germany reset the 10 year clock, which contemporary interpretations say would have happened.
GGF left the house before 10/1911, which is when the new 10-year clock would have expired, he would have been below the age of majority + 10 in 1914. Then it carries on from there.