Hi Kruger Listers I was wondering if anyone has plotted out on a European map where the Kruger's lived in Europe. According to the following email from the NORDRHEIN-WESTFALEN-D-request@rootsweb.com group it would seem that the Kruger's would have come from a small area (cluster) in Europe and then spread out as time progressed through the ages. What I am thinking of is -where did the Kruger's originate from?- what small region (cluster) or village?? Below is the email from the above group: "Hi Listers, it has already been explained by Roy that the amount of ancestors of every living person is reduced and cannot be seen arithmetical. I want to add that the more I come back in my ancestry the more I see how true this is. I have, for example, some 11G-grandparents who are seven times my 11G-grandparents! And what I remarked, too, is that there are certain "clusters" of ancestors in some lines. This has to do with the small villages they were living in or with certain professions they had where it was requested to marry each other or with property that way lying nearby... So, sometimes I find a name of a family and I know immediately that another family cannot be far, this helps sometimes in my researches. Normally there has always been one who left that "cluster" and married into another one, there are many possible reasons for that. But this worked very slowly. I'm quite far back in a lot of lines and so far I can find all of my ancestors from my father's side in the left Rhine region and Belgium and all of my ancestors on my mother's side in a small region around a town in Brandenburg. I suppose that this "regional clustering" is the same for the ancestry of most of the people in Germany, because there were so many little states and it was not that easy to move from one to another - "exceptions confirm the rule" as we say in Germany. I would say that a greater mobility came with industrialization and the wars of the 19th and 20th century - so for very few generations! Therefor I suppose that in german family research one should always think "regional" and not "national".... Greetings, Monika" ______________________________ Allen