I would like to remind everyone who has hit a brick wall ......... research your collateral lines. I can't stress this enough. Here's why ..... I have been at a dead end for my STULZ family ever since I started doing genealogy over 20 years ago. Recently I thought, what the heck, I'll look around again. Since I've done pretty much all the US research I can on my great great grandfather Andrew Stulz (who emigrated to the US [Brooklyn] in May 1836 with his family) I decided to try once again to find information on his siblings. One sister became a nun and I concentrated on her. She ended up in New Orleans. To make a long story short, I was able to make contact with her order and they looked up her records for me. They gave me her birth date. With fingers crossed I asked if it said WHERE she was born. IT DID! With that information I then knew exactly where in Alsace the family came from (the ship manifest said Strasbourg - I guess that was the biggest city near them - and it was many miles away). Lucky me, the small town they were from had the civil records all indexed. By contacting a volunteer over there, not only was I given all the extractions of marriages, births and deaths, I also learned grandparents' names and where they were from in Germany. Well, that led me to a Kinship book in Baden and now my family line goes all the way back to the early 1600s. I'm still pinching myself in disbelief. :) So, KEEP TRYING, look back over what you have, re-assess the information and do repeat searches every once in awhile (new information comes on line daily). I wish you all happy hunting and great success! ~ Mimi

I certainly concur. When I do research I cast a wide net! It has been extraordinarily success as many families intermarried. But my most recent brickwall to come down involved looking at two marriage certificates for my grandmother and her sister that I found some 7 years ago. Last summer I reviewed the witnesses names and started to research them. Before long, I found ten aunts of uncles of these sisters that no one in the family knew had come to the US. Now I am locating the entire family and this has taken me back another generation to my great great grandparents names and a connection to a famous Jewish senator in Canada and one in the US. You never know what you will find unless you try again and again. Also, thinking about how to solve the puzzle and accessing discussion groups from the areas your family are from is very helpful when new databases and information comes available. Diane Jacobs Somerset, NJ I would like to remind everyone who has hit a brick wall ......... research your collateral lines. I can't stress this enough. Here's why ..... I have been at a dead end for my STULZ family ever since I started doing genealogy over 20 years ago. Recently I thought, what the heck, I'll look around again. Since I've done pretty much all the US research I can on my great great grandfather Andrew Stulz (who emigrated to the US [Brooklyn] in May 1836 with his family) I decided to try once again to find information on his siblings. One sister became a nun and I concentrated on her. She ended up in New Orleans. To make a long story short, I was able to make contact with her order and they looked up her records for me. They gave me her birth date. With fingers crossed I asked if it said WHERE she was born. IT DID! With that information I then knew exactly where in Alsace the family came from (the ship manifest said Strasbourg - I guess that was the biggest city near them - and it was many miles away). Lucky me, the small town they were from had the civil records all indexed. By contacting a volunteer over there, not only was I given all the extractions of marriages, births and deaths, I also learned grandparents' names and where they were from in Germany. Well, that led me to a Kinship book in Baden and now my family line goes all the way back to the early 1600s. I'm still pinching myself in disbelief. :) So, KEEP TRYING, look back over what you have, re-assess the information and do repeat searches every once in awhile (new information comes on line daily). I wish you all happy hunting and great success! ~ Mimi