Please forgive me if I do not post to the Hesse list properly. This is my first attempt. I am most interested in the post below which was written by Jerome Dittman. My mother's maiden name is Dittman and we have been able to trace our ancestry back to Johann Heinrich Dittman (or Detman) who came to the USA on the ship Crawford, which departed from Rotterdam in the year of 1773. This ship arrived at the Port of Philadelphia on Oct 25, 1773. I would like to find out more information about Johann, such as where he was born and his parents. He married Elizabeth Horn and one of their children was David Dittman (my G,G,G Grandfather). He is buried in Clarion County PA. Thanks for any information. Karen Farr Shiloh Ohio X-Message: #5 Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 18:13:59 -0400 From: "Jerome Dittman" <dittdad@md.net> To: HESSE-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <004b01c421a4$9fa7e470$4f683b42@D7WJH241> Subject: Re: [HESSE] RE: Hesse Kassel Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The first place to start is the city or town where they lived after emigrating. City directories of the years after their arrival will tell you in which part of the city they resided. Then, if, you know their religion you can locate a near by church of that religion and check it's records. The baptismal records of their children may give the town from which the parents emigrated from. From that you can go on to the area in Hesse where the town is/was located and search for the records there. That is the procedure that I used in locating the birth place, which were in Hesse and Hannover, of both sets of my German born great grandparents. Jerry Dittman Boonsboro, MD