Dear listers, Lists of names by themselves are really not that helpful, because many names show up in different parts of the German Empire simultaneously. It would be much more helpful and [I think] interesting if you can provide some identifying information, associated places, time periods etc, for each ancestor. Besides the information you know about the ancestor you could tell about your research goals, such as ' I want to find out- - where in Germany he came from - where the records for this birthplace "XXXX" are - what it was like to live in 'XXXX" in the 19th Century etc... Who knows, somebody may have some ideas on resources you could use, plus - it's amazing what you can learn from helping someone else solve a problem. Here I can speak from experience. Baerbel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Listers might profit everyone if they start out by identifying names which are fairly unique. That can be accomplished by first going to _http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/Default.aspx _ Geogen allows one to determine locations where a name is found as well as relative population, of e.g. Wulfmann (1), and Ankesheil ( 0) , Wleke (0) Wilke (8799) Hoffmann (73458) Schnitker (413). All of these are related but only Wulfmann and Schnitker are somewhat manageable: " *Summary Schnitker* I found 413 entries and localized them in 93 different counties. There are around 1096 people with this name projected on total population. This is an /average occurance/. Relative Distribution for schnitker <http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/MapGateway.aspx?name=schnitker&target=DE&renderer=EN_US&mode=rel> Considering the population density the most schnitkers can be found in /Landkreis Oldenburg (NI)/, namely 177 phonebook entries per million people. The fewest live in Kreisfreie Stadt Hamburg. Absolute Map for schnitker <http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/MapGateway.aspx?name=schnitker&target=DE&renderer=EN_US&mode=abs> Most schnitkers can be found in /Landkreis Gütersloh (NW)/, there are exactly 55 phonebook entries listed. The fewest live in Alb-Donau-Kreis (1). (Please note: urban agglomerations can influence this visualization) If you go to a map of Germany you will see that we have a concentration of these names along the Wiehengebirge. Some in the area known as Osnabruekerland. Before doing searches it helps to have some useful references such as the Michelin Red Guide, Deutschland and a good road atlas for Germany. In the above example the unique name allowed a useful entry into church books and established not only the relationships but next to the confirmation records of 2 children (September1848) that the families emigrated that month. . At that time the name was Wulf but the only Wulfmann lives within 2 km of where the Wulf family resided and his ancestors were also, Wulf. .. Happy hunting. Dave Baerbel Johnson wrote: > Dear listers, > Lists of names by themselves are really not that helpful, because many names show up in different parts of the German Empire simultaneously. It would be much more helpful and [I think] interesting if you can provide some identifying information, associated places, time periods etc, for each ancestor. Besides the information you know about the ancestor you could tell about your research goals, such as ' I want to find out- > - where in Germany he came from > - where the records for this birthplace "XXXX" are > - what it was like to live in 'XXXX" in the 19th Century > etc... > Who knows, somebody may have some ideas on resources you could use, plus - it's amazing what you can learn from helping someone else solve a problem. Here I can speak from experience. > Baerbel > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > >