Dear Roland, I am not familiar with the records in Alton, but my relatives who came from "Germany or Prussia" according to censuses and civil records, belonged to a Catholic church whose pastor recorded the birth place of the bridal couple who had come from the old country and married here. One set of great, great grandparents were married in Westphalia but their church death register information included their place of birth. Possibly, there might be a church record (baptism for the children who were born in Illinois) which might include the parents' place of birth. Maybe a local paper would have information about their birth place in an obit. Maybe an historical society might have something or a county history and biography. I am assuming that the family is either Catholic or Lutheran, so I would try church records first. Madison County Genweb http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilmadiso/ Ssome of the links on the above seem to be out of date or not working. Georgia Roland Bauer wrote: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------532EFA0F167B3944146A3C58 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Can anyone help? RGB Subject: ILTrails: Theodor Dietz and relatives, Alton, Madison IL 1880/1882 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-iltrails@usroots.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: ILTrails@usroots.com X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Hello ILTrails, please excuse, that I start with some listings - I am looking for the Dietz from Essentho, who probably lived in Alton, because they partly travelled together with the Gottlob-Family from Essentho - that family was found in Alton... The 1882 Alton Patron List shows DIETZ, J. Theodore Prop'r of lime kilns on Second St., b. Minden, Ger. came to Mad. Co. 1854. This fits together with the 1880 census, which shows: Theodore DIETZ Self single age 46 born Prussia Living next door on the same page 89B was the brother of Theodore: William DIETZ age 37 born Prussia Caroline DIETZ wife age 32 born Prussia Caroline DIETZ daughter age 9 born ILLINOIS William DIETZ son age 7 born ILL Edward Dietz son age 4 born ILL Charles DIETZ son age 2 born ILL Not to far from this on page 90C was: Bernard Gottlob self age 43 Prussia Mary Gottlob wife age 27 Prussia Louisa Gottlob dau age 8 born ILLinois Bernard Gottlob son age 4 born ILL Mary Gottlob dau age 3 born ILL Joseph Gottlob son age 11months born IL The emigrants from Essentho were: 1) Dietz, Heinrich (*about 1793 ?) emigrates from Essentho, (Marsberg) Westphalia, Prussia to the US approx 1851, together with his Children: 2) Dietz, Theodor *16.03.1837 3) Dietz, Karoline *15.06.1839 4) Dietz, Wilhelm *11.02.1844 5) Dietz, Maria * 25.06.1847 perhaps following 6) Dietz, Franz Joseph *07.07.1828 Essentho, Father: Heinrich Dietz (nee "Neuen Schulten"), Mother: Wilken, Louise, emigrated approx 1846/47. travelled together with Joseph Gottlob *12.01.1829 Essentho. 7) Dietz, Friedrich Wilhelm *26.02.1831 Essentho, Father: Heinrich Dietz (nee "Neuen Schulten"), Mother: Wilken, Louise, emigrated approx 1848. 8) Philipp Dietz emigrates in 1851 with wife and child from Essentho I would think, that Theodor Dietz (at 2), born 16.03.1837 could be the Theodore Dietz in the 1882 Alton Patrons list, but this list names Minden, Prussia as his town of origin and there is a difference between his years of births (Census - Theodor: 1834 / Essentho - Theodor: 1837) and year of emigration (Alton-patron-list: 1854 / Essentho-Theodor: 1851), So it might not be "my" Theodore from Essentho, but: There is hardly any chance to find the westphalian (Essentho) Dietz between all the others (mainly from Hessen, Bavaria, Vogtland etc). I did not find any of them on ship-lists, only on the emigration-records for the bishopric of Paderborn. I thought it might be a good idea to look for the people, they travelled with. In the case of Franz Joseph Dietz (see above No. 6) this is Joseph Gottlob. Both were born in Essentho. And the Gottlob-Family settled in Alton, Illinois. The other Dietz followed Franz Joseph Dietz - so I thought, they could have settled in Alton as well. Two given names of the the other (Census) Alton Dietzes fit together with the given names of the Essentho-Dietz, e.g. William and Caroline. Unfortunately they seem to be one generation apart from each other. May I ask, if somebody is familiar with the Dietz / and / or / Gottlob-Families. Maybe some Alton-records show Essentho as place of origin for some Alton-Dietz? Any help is much appreciated. Thank you very much for your attention and have freundliche Grüße aus Berlin! gregor winkelhahn -- best regards! schöne grüße! dietz.tz.tz! the dietz.tz.tz! genealogical project dietz in, from and to westphalia in Etteln, Atteln, Essentho... mailto:dietz.tz.tz@gmx.net Montag, 4. August 2003 --------------532EFA0F167B3944146A3C58-- ==== MO-STLOUIS-METRO Mailing List ==== If you are researching the Irish in St. Louis, you might want to have a look at Diane Shaw's websites: http://members.gtw.net/~seamus/Irshnstl.htm and http://members.gtw.net/~seamus/KerryPatch.htm