Dear Georgene, There is enough information here to at least attempt to locate these folks using a different approach. Go to the Czech Mail List website and on the left hand side you will find a list of links, one of which is Ellis Island II. This will take you to the Stepan Morse website for JewishGen and there you will find what is called the "short form" which is gray. It is the most powerful search tool available for this set of records. If CZECH listers are not familiar with this page, take some time to explore it. Stepan Morse has done a superb job of providing valuable search engines for the "serious". Put in the name Kos, Valenta or Hardina. I would assume you have already done an exact search already so do a "sounds like" or "contains" search. The site will warn you that a "contains search" gobbles up computer time so have a high speed modem and fast processor if you do that one very much. Also, there is a place to designate how many records you want displayed. You have to adjust this figure to you computer's capabilities. On a high speed LAN, I can download 25,000 records at one time. At home, on a 55K modem, I am fortunate to get 500 records at one time. Lastly, if you can handle Excel or spreadsheets, save each search page on your computer. Later, paste and copy them into Excel. If you do not know how to do this, do not attempt it, because it is very frustrating to take hypertext into a spreadsheet because of the editing. I use macros to do that drudgery. The end result is file that can be sorted and edited. Once you find the "most likely suspects", you can start examining the original manifests on-line. Look for the towns they came from, who they left behind, and where were they going. What you are looking for are "clones" of the Vaclav Kos and Anna Hrdina. They were not the only ones who came here. Neighbors, cousins, brothers and sisters came too. I spent over a year looking for a great uncle who immigrated to Chicago using this method. I located him and lot more. I now have a database of every family that left their village and came to the US. I also have the addresses of where they all are located now in the US. Lastly, my grandmother came through Ellis Island in 1907. Before there were ever any on-line records, you had to write to NARA and get them to do the search. For about $15 I received a huge document which was the entire page of the manifest that listed her arrival in NY. I have used the above technique and have never found her record. Her last name is so misspelled that no search strategy will locate her record. I have contacted the Ellis Island Association to correct that problem and they have done nothing. In her case, all I can do is search the manifest directly and find her page. the point is that just because you cannot find someone does not mean that a record for them does not exist. You just might not have the right tools yet to locate that specific records. Ron Mlejnek Ron Mlejnek At 10:47 AM 06/12/2004, you wrote: >Vaclav Kos and his wife Anna Hrdina or Hardina I am not sure for I have seen >it spelled both ways. They came here from Bohemia in 1903. I do not know >what port. They are not in the Baca books, in fact nobody in my family are >in >the Baca books and they all where from Bohemia. They say she was from around >Praha and he Velka Vez near Tabor. They are my greatgrandparent and know >absolutly nothing about them. My ancestors did not talk much of thier past >and I >was to young to prod. I do know they had some connection to Iowa for I >have a >group photo with them in it on a farm. Sorry I do not know very much. She >died >in 1930 and he in 1931 both in Chicago.Thanks Georgene > > >==== CZECH Mailing List ==== >To unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to: > CZECH-L-request@rootsweb.com (for individual messages) > CZECH-D-request@rootsweb.com (for a digest of multiple > messages) > In the body include only one word: unsubscribe