Hello Denise, Those questions were answered so many times on these pages, but an overview over Danube Swabian history (Banat was only one of the 6 Danube Swabian areas), you can find on www.hrastovac.net pages, specifically under 'historical information'. Starting chronologically more or less from the history of when and why the future Donauschwaben left the Germanic lands after they were invited by the Emperor of Holy Roman Empire to resettle the lands devastated by the Turk's occupation prior to 1688 and all the way to the end of WWII when all those by now 5,000 million of Danube Swabians were expelled from their ancestral lands. Happy reading, Rosina T. Schmidt Vancouver Island > My father was asking me if I knew what had motivated his ancestors to > emigrate from the Banat to America. I do not know the economic > conditions > or if there was something specific. My families emigrated from Pankota > and > Ujpanat (Neupanat) in 1903-1908 (Pfau, Plennert, Schmidt, Freisinger, > Hauptman, Reznicsek, Doran, Engel, et al). What were the reasons others > have found that their ancestors left for America. > > I also have another question - my ancestor came to America in 1903 at the > age of 24. I am told he started playing the cornet at age 9 and played in > the Kaiser's band. How would a man living in the Banat come to play in > the > Kaiser's band? Does anyone know of a resource where I could find > information on this fact? > > Thank you, > > Denise in Oregon > My genealogy related pages are at: > http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~merritt/ > and http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~merritt/ > The latter created using John Cardinal's Second Site >