You sound as if you've done some thorough searching already. This may be useless information, but perhaps not. 1) Have you been to the NYC Archives on 31 Chambers St., Manhattan. If not, I'd go there and try to find more records. 2) Did you get, and record, the addresses from the directories and census records? Find local churches from that period and try to track down baptisms and marriages at the likely churches. It's a lot of legwork, but if you find something it may be worth it. It'll be harder as you may not have an indication of the faith of these people. 3) On the liklihood of people having close, or the same names being a match. I am currently tracking no less than 4 women named Maria Magdalena Litsch,only one of whom *may* be my ancestor. All around the same age, two within a month of each other! And also 4 Anna Maria Widemer women, one of whom is my ancestor. Certainly not common names in the USA. But sadly all too common in the town I am searching, and were it not for the fact I knew the town, at least one of the names is really too darn common in a 75 mile radius of the town and probably even farther. 3.a.) The moral of that story being, our ancestors were less than creative in naming children, and they had lots of children. Thus ensuring cousins up the wazoo, all having the same name. Because the children were named after ancestors. 3.b.) Henriette sounds like an all to common name for a woman in France in the 1800s. Bonnet, I don't want to even go there on how common it sounds. It could be your ancestor. I could be related to the last czar of Russia, too. But this is not about what could be, but what you can prove. I'm not saying it isn't worth exploring and digging deeper, it can be easier to track forward than backward. But you want to have a good reason for doing so (maybe just my opinion). Exhaust your research in NY first. The censuses should give an idea of when they came over. Pour over the ships' registers from the National Archives. You may get lucky, or at least confirm a date of immigration, and perhaps a route. The route may give a clue. My grandmother swore up and down she was born in Paris. We got her to admit once she wasn't, but she still got it wrong. I found her records anyway. But I knew a few places to look, and got lucky after just my third try. My gr-gr-grandfather is another story. The ghost who walked. There are other things you can do on the European side, but I don't have them bookmarked. They would be in the archives of the mailing list, which you could search. But someone else will probably point you there. There is also the cdhf, which might have some useful clues. http://cdhf.net/fr/index.php But you seem to be seeing the trees fine. HTH, Brian On Wed, July 6, 2011 8:30 am, [email protected] wrote: > Hello all. Please forgive the length of this post. I am detailing my > confusion in the hopes that some kind soul will point out something > obvious > that I am not seeing for the trees.