On Dec 22, 2010, at 3:17 PM, Ernst-Peter Winter wrote: > Dear Debra, > >> The short version of the question: do any church records >> exist for Groß Zimmern prior to 1640? > > You can find the beginning of church recors in > Hesse-Darmstadt by looking up the "Praetorius" at the german > GenWiki. > > Groß-Zimmern could be found at: > <http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Kirchenb%C3%BCcher_und_Standesregister_f%C3%BCr_alle_Wohnpl%C3%A4tze_im_Land_Hessen_%281939%29/062> > > You can see that there are no church record prior to 1640. Thanks for the link, very helpful. I'll use this to check records availability in the future. On Dec 22, 2010, at 2:02 PM, Marleen Van Horne wrote: > It is highly unlikely you will find any records before 1640. The Thirty > Years War which lasted from 1618 to 1648 was extremely hard on what is > now Germany. Many towns that existed before 1618 completely disappeared > as a result of the war. In the case of towns that survived, their > earlier records were destroyed, completely. To find records from the > 1640s is rare, in many cases it was the 1680s before regular record > keeping began again. I knew about this from research in other areas of Hesse, so I suspected that this might be the case with Groß Zimmern. But I held out hope that there might be other options. Spachbrücken records go back to 1610 and Reinheim to 1575. Maybe those parishes were fortunate. But I'm grateful to have the Groß Zimmern records back as far as they go. Thanks for your help! Regards, Debra MacLaughlan-Dumes http://sakionline.net/familypage