Elbogen was the oldest district of the Egerland. This article is by Prof. Zippe. Here are excellent details avalable in the English language. http://home.xnet.com/~ugeiser/Genealogy/Bohemia/overview.html Here are more individual areas where you may find your ancestors villages. These listings were compiled by the Austrian Hungarian government and made available in English by Mr. Urs Geiser. Thank you Mr. Geiser! The period of these statistics is prior to the Ausgleich where individual Ethnic groups received more rights to their settlements. The presentation here is pretty much what your ancestors would have experienced before they went to America. If you encounter among the listing of professions the word "fellows" (German "Gesellen") it is the equivalent to "Journeyman." You can see how strong the guilds of professional crafts were in the Egerland. EVERYBODY was trained in one trade or another and this was not a recent development but a historic custom. http://www.gaes.de/e-elbkr.html and click on the city names for maps on this website at different periods in time. Although the text below is not a very good translation it states the legal privileges given to the Egerlanders for their sovereignty and allowing them flat tax rates. Quote: "With the big privileg of 1341, which grants beside the legal sovereignty also an easy flat-rate tax, was the district Elbogen holden under Bohemian fief-highness. This tax privileg and administrative-technical decisions brought about 1652 Joachimsthal, Platten, Gottesgab, Bleistadt, Schlaggenwald, Schönfeld, Lauterbach, Graslitz and Petschau to destrict Elbogen."