> ...I have one clue, and one only, to an ancestor's place of origin in > Europe: he claimed he was naming his successive plantations for his > home town. > > Unfortunately, the baptismal records in that home town (and the 8 > parishes surrounding it) fail to include his surname. There should > be his baptism and the baptisms of two of his siblings. There are > two burials of the right surname, and one en passant mention of > something that happened at (surname)'s house. That's it for a > period of roughly 75 years. One would expect a "home town" to have > more mentions of the name. Yes, I've been _very_ flexible on the > surname (I have about 36 known variants and another 24 possible > variants). > > I checked the IGI and the Vital Records Index, checked more recent > document-indices, etc etc and found nothing encouraging; there are > no concentrations of the surname, only one or two instances at a > time in places that would have been _widely_ scattered in the 1700s. > > Someone help me out -- If he didn't come from where he said he came > from, and where everyone who met him said he was from, where's the > first place I should look next? > > Cheryl I'll presume first that the country in question is Germany-Prussia- Bavaria. (I'm going out on a limb here, as a rereading of your message implies perhaps Ireland or Britain.) I can offer less certain advice about Italy and France... First, the IGI is rather hit-or-miss, as not all parish registers have been transcribed, nor have all been fully microfilmed. So there are gaps in the IGI, as well as the mistranscriptions. If you have any certainty of the area (not known exactly from your description), you might try a corroborative research effort for a known or presumed birth or marriage at the Standesamt, the archives of which are usually at the county (Kreis) level. Failing that, and much more likely to produce only negative results, would be a comparison of nearby towns (perhaps a radius of 15 km, 10 mi) on the map, in the IGI, and represented by microfilms through the LDS. (This is not a small task!) Once compared, it might point to some parish registers that have not yet been transcribed, and which might be your first areas to search through. Perhaps, if a Familienbuch (FB) exists for the known community, it might be worthwhile to hunt it down. Some FBs are archived in diocesan houses, but perhaps only about 30%. More are of much more recent vintage and not yet archived. Often the very best FB authors made use of not only the Kirchenbuch (KB) but also some or much of the available civil records. Often the best FBs include towns of origin that may not have been included in the KB, as often the author is a local historian who has independent knowledge of some families. Again, though, the FB should be treated as a secondary source, one that indicates where to search for primary material. I could be much more specific if I knew exactly what area you are researching, and I can offer some similar information for research in Sicily and provincial France. Best of luck! Thomas Kohn [email protected]