Summary: Think pronunciation, not American attempts at German orthography George, In your recent post to the Baden-Wurttemberg List, you wrote: . . .[request] any info on Alfred ORBACH who was born in Mannheim 1860-1870 era . . . Me: My suggestions may take you backwards a few steps, but keep an open mind (or read Freakonomics then read this) because you may get to where you need to only by paying attention. Mannheim is a big place and it's good to hold off awhile before you go looking for microfilms since the city and nearby dorfs will be quite a few films to go through. I started by seeing if Orbach is a valid German surname. It is. I came up with the variation of Ohrbach but Orbach is by far the most common. BUT, there are NO Orbach's or Ohrbachs living in the modern German province of Baden-Wuerttemberg where Mannheim is planted. Look it up yourself. Go to the useful Germany surname mapping website at http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/Default.aspx and enter Orbach then select the Research button. Look at the various maps/charts. Then try Ohrbach. See whattamean? Note the concentration of Orbach's (65 out of 147) in Oberbergischer county in the modern province of North Rhine-Westphalia. Note that most of the others are in counties contiguous. This is the modern distibution for Orbach and Ohrbach. It's based on phonebook entries. Not perfect but pretty interesting when you have a surname with some volume but not excessive numbers. So, I picked a large city in the area of the concentration--Koeln (oe = o with umlaut) which we Americanskies call Cologne. I went directly to ShtetlSeeker at http://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/LocTown.asp I wanted to see if there are any places near the city of Koeln (big city near where all the Orbach's sleep at night) with a name than could be interpreted (spelled) as Mannheim by some American official/enumerator. Here's what I did. In the ShtetlSeeker Town Search page I entered Mannheim (data you supplied to us) for town and Germany for country. I selected the radio button next to Selected City then selected Germany and then Koeln as the city. I clicked the Start the Search button and then looked at all the places that sound like Mannheim but that are close to Koeln (the fifth column). Double Bingo. Manheim is 15.6 miles and Monheim is only 10.8 miles distant from Koeln. Manheim is a phonetic dead=ringer for Mannheim and Monheim is close enough for me to image an American census taker thinking old Alfred said Mannheim when he really said Monheim. Manheim is sometimes refered to as Manheim bei Kerpen because it is grouped (since 1975) with the nearby city of Kerpen. Monheim is now refered to as Monheim am Rhein. I like this system of disambiguation. If we used such a system, we wouldn't have to wonder where Homer Simpson and his family really call home. (It's in Springfield next to Eugene, Oregon, IMHO BTW). So, I think your Alfred ORBACH may have, in fact, come from Monheim am Rhein or Manheim bei Kerpen, not Mannheim in the middle of our list's target area of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Want more reason to believe? Go to that other mega database (the German phonebook was the first database we looked at as the basis for the Germany surname mapping webpage) of German surnames)--The LDS Family History Library's FamilySearch.org. Do an advanced search on the surname Orbach in the country of Germany. Results: all or almost all Orbachs came from outside of Baden-Wuerttemberg. In fact, they almost all came from the area where people named Orbach live and watch TV today. When it states Prussia, note the next geographic data smaller than country and you'll see these are in western Germany, NOT traditional Prussian territory east of the Oder. Why? Because Prussia came into control of the Rhineland in the early 1800's. Yes, more reason to consider the area just northeast of Koeln as your homeland. I hope I haven't muddied the river (Mannheim and Monheim am Rhein are both on the same river after all) for you. If you think you'd like to pursue this way of thinking, I'll try to round up some film numbers and another geographical rootsweb list you can subscribe to while we cogitate on your needs here on the B-W. Enjoy da veekend. Paul

Paul: I am an avid evesdropper on this website and have learned so much from you. I really appreciate your knowledge and especially your wit. Thanks for all you do. Betsy in Michigan -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 551 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len