FYI--the following is a comment I received from a contact in my paternal ancestors' village in Swabia, south of Stuttgart. I guess it shows how lucky we French Canadians are. "I am astonished that you find the dates of ancestors in France back to the late 1500s. In our region a lot of records have been destroyed during the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648). Obviously the soldiers of the French Revolution were not as destructive as the Swedish, French and Imperial troups during the war 1618 - 1648 in Germany."