My question to you is even if you have the town where they came from in Alsace-Lorraine who do you get that information. I have my gr grandfathers birth certificate where he was born. How do I go about from there. I also can't find the ship he came over on which was in the late 1850's. The Birth Certificate says Cosswiller. So where do I go from there? Anyone can help me would be appreciated. -----Original Message----- From: alsace-lorraine-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:alsace-lorraine-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Valorie Zimmerman Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 4:12 AM To: alsace-lorraine@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [A-L] Holle Hi Mary Ann, and welcome to the wonderful world of A-L research. For all European research, you must have a village name, or at least a small region with a few villages, because that is where all the records are kept! There are few to no departement, county or region-wide censuses or other general surveys such as our US Census records. So, you must do your American or Canadian research, before trying to "jump the pond" back to Europe. Have you found the naturalization applications? Often the first and second application contain much more detail than the final certificate. How about obituaries, in particular those published in small local newspapers, church publications, or German or French newspapers? Many of the old newspapers are available on microfilm. For lots of ideas of how to go about this, see: http://genweblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/european-research.html I hope this is helpful. Valorie On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 8:01 AM, Mary Ann Webb <conansmom@att.net> wrote: > Hello! > > My great grandparents emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine to the USA in 1888. I know their birthdates and know they were married in 1886 however I do not know what city they were from or other family members names ie their parents, siblings, etc. Do you have any suggestions on how I can obtain this information? > > Thank you! -- Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=507013560 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/valoriez MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/valoriez Genealogy Blog: http://genweblog.blogspot.com/ All my pages: http://valorie.zimmerman.googlepages.com -- Resources for Alsace-Lorraine list members: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~valorie/Alsace-Lorraine-L.htm ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ALSACE-LORRAINE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3440 (20080913) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3443 (20080915) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com