This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/ZVC.2ACE/4040.1 Message Board Post: Samantha, this is just to give a bit of historical background: Germany, like the U.S., has always been made up of states. Franz Wägeling was from what was until 1945 the very small state (until 1918, Duchy) of Brunswick (in German: Braunschweig), the capital of which was the city of Brunswick (Braunschweig). Brunswick was made up of a number of disconnected enclaves, covering a total area (that is, all the separate enclaves taken together) just a little smaller than that covered by the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Here is the link to a map of pre-1945 Brunswick, so that you know what it looked like. Note, as mentioned, that the state was made up of very small enclaves of territory that did not connect with one another: http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Braunschweig/uebersichtskarte.html Following World War II and the break-up of the huge state of Prussia (in German: Preussen; capital: Berlin), the Prussian province of Hanover, the state of Oldenburg, and the two very small states of Brunswick (Braunschweig) and Schaumburg-Lippe combined to form today's German state of Lower Saxony (in German: Niedersachsen), with the city of Hanover (in German: Hannover) as its capital. The former state of Brunswick is thus one of the four components of today's new postwar state of Lower Saxony. Vital records are not and never have been kept at either the national, state, or provincial level in Germany. In Germany, vital records are kept strictly at the local level. So before you can really proceed, you are going to have to do additional research in the U.S. and find out exactly which city, town or village in Brunswick your great-grandfather was from. There is no such name in Germany as either "Kerune" or "Kaone", and I can't think of any legitimate name that would even resemble either of those, except maybe "Krone". I assume you got "Kerune" and "Kaone" from old American records filled out by an American who didn't speak a word of German. You always have to be careful with American records! Your great-grandfather did something unusual with your last name. He simply dropped the "Umlaut", that is, the two dots, over the "a". That left "Wageling", a name that does not exist in Germany and that would be pronounced completely differently from Wägeling anyway. The rule in German is that if the "Umlaut" is left off of a vowel where it should be, the "Umlaut" gets replaced with the letter "e". So for the spelling of the name to have remained correct, "Wägeling" should have become "Waegeling" in America. It's puzzling that your great-grandfather didn't do that. You say that you don't know where your great-great-grandparents Theodor and Minna were born in Germany. Well, people did not move around very much back in their day. It was unusual for the average person to travel more than about 30 miles from home, and more unusual for the average person to leave his home state. Remember -- a unified country called "Germany" did not come into existence until 1871. So I think you can safely assume that Franz's parents were born in the same town in Brunswick where he was born, or possibly the next town over, or something like that. What was Franz Wägeling's religious denomination? Robert