I would like to thank everyone who so kindly responded to my inquiry about researching my Bavarian ancestors. So many great suggestions for places to visit and how to research our family lines! I have tried to respond to each person who wrote to me directly, but if I somehow skipped you, THANKS! I belong to a number of rootsweb lists, but this has got to be one of the best! Anyway, I've already had a great stroke of luck! Many of you suggested contacting local people to see what I could learn, so I wrote to a ZENGEL gentlemen living near the area where I thought my family was from (I found his e-mail address on the internet). As it turned out, he is from a different part of Germany, but he gave me the name and address of another ZENGEL that he thought might help me. I heard from him this morning, and he knows of my family line! He told me what villages they lived in (Wörth, Klingenberg, Röllfeld / Röllbach, Grossheubach), and even told me where they originally came from - Styria (Steiermark) in Austria - in the 13th century! (I also learned of other tidbits - like the famous brewery that our family operated in Wörth starting in the late 1700s, and the fact that we were once a family of "tong makers"!) But the best thing is that we now know what villages to visit during our visit to Bavaria and where to focus our research. Best regards, Janet Zengel Messer Micanopy, Florida USA