In a message dated 5/10/2006 10:12:02 AM Mountain Standard Time, lindatherkela@msn.com writes: As Aida points out, some of them may have been there quite a long time in the same house -- but the church records do not begin until usually the 1700s, perhaps a very few in late 1600s. Don't forget about tax records that go back to 1654 for people who had enough assets to pay taxes at that time. Other tax surveys for the 17th and 18th century are available. There are also various census -- mostly for conscription prior to 1850 or so, so they will only have male names. However, in some areas, there are land records that exist. They would have been kept by the local landowners (the lords or monasteries) -- they needed to keep track of who was paying the rent, robot, other taxes, etc. They do show the passing of a house from father to son, and also some of the other payments to the siblings from the child who got the house and farm, sometimes provisions to the widow, and even some remarriages; some of them act as court records. So it is possible to track back some of the lines farther. This will not help you if one of the families is "landless," and noninheriting children are not always mentioned. The records Linda refers to are generally called "Manorial Records" by the LDS and archivists. They are often filed under the name of the noble family that owned the dominion on which given peasants lived. There are a few on film at the LDS....very few. Professional researchers can usually find out about the ownership for you and tell you what might be available before they visit an archive on your behalf. Then you can choose what you want researched -- land transfers, marriage contracts, last wills and testaments or court (justice) proceedings. To learn the names of the noble lords that owned an ancestral town or village use J.G. Sommer's books: Das Konigreich Boehmen. The history of ownership is on the first pages under the title / chapter heading for each Herrschaft or Dominion. Even if you cannot read German you may be able to pick out the names of the nobles and the years associated with them. In any case you should copy ALL of the pages associated with an ancestral dominion and get the relevant ones translated. I would like to request that anyone who has had Sommer pages translated please make the translations available by putting them up on the Internet or telling the list what you have to share with interested people. There is one website at which the entire Elbogen Kreis book by Sommer is to be translated. The site currently has 383 pages on the Internet. (many thanks to Urs Geiser for this work). http://home.xnet.com/~ugeiser/Genealogy/Bohemia/contents.html Karen