Wendelin, Piece by piece you have been adding information for us at the companion web pages you set up for this List, < http://ortenau.speedyspace.de/search/ >. There is a list of Ortssippenbuecher, Auswanderer, and the many other sources of soldiers, surnames, farms, Guild members and more including a new page to allow up to understand the difference in Julian and Gregorian Calendar dates. This calendar tool is so new I wonder if others know it exists as yet. I realize that much of this information is from books to which you have found access. But I wonder about more advanced additional earlier details. With Church Registers starting, if we are lucky, in the middle 1600s I wonder about other sources before the Church Registers (if we ever reach that point in our ancestral antiquity). We searchers in the towns of the Ortenau understand that the Ortenau was never a country as we might think of a country. It was part Habsburg, part Hessian, part Margraviate, part Wuerttembergische, part ecclesiastical, part Reichsstädt and part of a lot of other pieces. Do you know if any of those geographic pieces of land ownerships ever maintained lists of fiefs, lists of muster, lists of taxes, land ownership records, archived Guild and Apprenticeship Records, Burgher/Citizenship Rolls, Wills/Probate Records, School/University Records (although finding one of my ancestors who could write his own name might be a major surprise) or any other early lists for the various towns which would predate the Church Registers. Then, if such lists might exist at some archival location in the Baden area would I be imprudent to ask if at some later time when I reach that stage in chasing my ancestry if I might ask you, for a price, to do personal research or if I might ask if you could suggest someone who for a fair price might do any wanted archive research into such lists....again if I ever reach that point. djweber [email protected]