Gary, Thank you so much for that information! I've saved the website in my favorites. Suzanne gpmartens@sbcglobal.net wrote: Some more information on surname charts. For those of you that absolutely want a surname chart, here are the problems. If you wanted to have a surname chart made at Volgograd, it depends on what records are available for the village or villages at Volgograd. This is part of the reason that it takes Pleve and his researchers so long to generate a chart. Records for a given village could possibly be in 3 places, or they have big gaps, or no records. Apparently they are still finding records mixed in with other village records. I'm sure that daughter colonies are even more of a problem, because most of the villages created after about 1853 have no census, and may have no other lists of any kind about people. Then what about church records? Do they even exist, or are the records mixed in the parish church for that area? The resarchers try to start out with a chart that includes the 1775/1798, 1818, 1834, 1850 and 1857/1858 census. If that information isn't available, then they have no basis for the chart. Some families moved from one village to another in the early 1800's, so they need census records for multiple villages. Take a village like Galka, census records are apparently at Saratov and Volgograd. I know this because I ordered census records (from Pleve) for a surname from Galka back in 2000. I received the census for 1850 and 1857 almost immediately, so they are at Saratov. I received the census for 1834 and 1816 about 5 weeks later, so I figure they are at Volgograd. Volgograd only has church records for Galka, after 1860 to about 1900, with gaps. Take Dreispitz, which was founded in 1766. There were people that moved from Dobrinka, and possibly other villages, to Dreispitz in the early 1800's. Even if there are census records available, there is no information available from 1858 to about 1900. What's church records are available are Births: 1901-1902; Deaths: 1903, 1904; Marriages: 1894, 1895, 1905. Apparently even the large village of Frank has records at Saratov and Volgograd. Volgograd is 100 miles from Saratov, so it's an archive where researchers that live in Saratov go to every month or so. Engels is just across the river and easier to get to. So that's the dilemma which extends to many villages. For those of you that are dead set on having a chart, here's a way of doing it. Buy all the records that you can for a surname and enter the information into your database. Then have Wholly Genes generate a chart for you: http://www.whollygenes.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=WG&S creen=GOTCHARTS They taken input from The Master Genealogist, Family Tree Maker, Legacy and PAF. The prices are: 3' x 3' chart $19.95, 3' x 10' chart $29.95, and 3' x 25' $69.95. If you use some other program, I can convert your database into an acceptable format for Wholly Genes. Gary Martens Dobrinka & Schilling Villages VC ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GER-VOLGA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.