This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: LHILLMAN Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.newyork.counties.kings/15583.1.1.2/mb.ashx Message Board Post: If you can locate the church for the marriage, you will likely find the baptismal records there. If you know the demonination of your couple (Catholic, Lutheran, etc.), you will narrow your search considerably. You might want to check out this website - www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com. You may find some useful information and it has a very good section on Brooklyn churches. Very little BMD information in the US is indexed, primarily because of the volume of work involved and after 9-11, because of security/privacy issues. There is no central US repository for BMD info - it is all held state-by-state and within each state the information can be held at the municipal or county or state level. Moreover, each state required registration of this information at various times; in NYC registration of BMD info wasn't done until 1898. And just because it was *required* doesn't mean it was actually done in the early years. For these reasons, your best option is to find the church...provided that it (and their records) still exist. As for your question of outbound passenger lists, this information was not kept. I'm not certain if it was even recorded at the time. We have inbound lists because immigration regulation started in 1820; in effect, the authorities were only concerned with who entered the US, not who left. This being said, you do have a few options, almost all of which involve ordering film from your local Family History Library. If you think that he was still in NYC in 1855 and can locate an address for your man, you can check the NY State census for him for that year. This census will give you his name, age and occupation as well as the # of years in the US as well as that same info for the persons in his household. It is not likely to tell you anything you don't already know, but it will close that 1850-60 loop for you somewhat. To do this, you will need city directories for Manhattan and Brookly for 1853-1856 for the address and then cross reference that information to a finding aid for the 1855 census. That census is not indexed so you will have to go line by line, page by page to find them. It can be quite tedious but there is nothing like the thrill of success. By the way, you might also find the website www.stevenmorse.org helpful to you for future use. This site provides a portal to a number of larger sites (Ellis Island, in particular) and is a much stronger search engine the the ones attached to each site. Off the top of my head, it may not prove to be immediately useful to your current questions, but you never know. Anyway, hope this provided some useful info. Good luck on your search! Lynn Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.