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!

I'm not sure how to offer help here. You simply don't provide enough information on what you know. But here goes. You know when they were married. If you know where (which is unlikely based on your information) they were married try to find the church they were married in. Church marriage records can sometimes provide vital clues. Look for the baptism records on the children born in this country. Sometimes they will state the town from where the parents came from. Online researching can be convenient, but there is no substitute for old-fashioned off-line research. In addition to trying to find their US church membership, look for the immigration papers, for ships registers. Death certificates may list their parents. Port of entry records may indicate relatives. Old letters from home, old photographs, local newspaper articles, family lore, elder family members. These are all sources to explore. The scant information you give leads me to believe you haven't gone much farther than US Census records. Good luck, Brian On Sat, September 13, 2008 10:01 am, Mary Ann Webb 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! > -- > 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 > >

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