> My gr gr gr grandfather came from Bingen (on the Rhine), Germany - or Prussia. > He came to America in 1754 as near as I can determine - His name was Johannes Hello Hal, you will probably know about Valerie Kramer <funzone@harborside.com> who posted something about John(Johannes) Baker to OHMONROE on april 29th. Here in Kaiserslautern is the "Institut fuer pfaelzische Geschichte und Volkskunde"(Institute of palatine history). Two years ago I visited some of their lectures. Most interesting. They are keeping a card based "Auswanderungskartei"(emigration database). The official told me that they are using some unemployed people who are on welfare to get everything in the computer. Unfortunately they are not yet online. I will phone them next week to confirm all this, and ask them to do a lookup, although I doubt that they will accept phone based lookups. It would be best if you could give me all information you have on your John/Johannes Becker, including profession and religion. Their address is: Institut fuer pfaelzische Geschichte und Volkskunde Auswanderungsdatei Benzinoring 6 67657 Kaiserslautern Germany In Bingen on the Rhine records of last century are probably kept either at the protestant or catholic church: protestant: Evangelisches Pfarramt Dromersheimer Chaussee 1 55411 Bingen am Rhein Germany catholic: Katholisches Pfarramt Bingen Zehnthofstrasse 14 55411 Bingen am Rhein Germany I did some online research of emigrant ships, but in the 1750s there was no ship with a Johannes Becker listed. Finding living descendants of somebody named Becker in Germany is probably very difficult, because privacy laws forbids giving personal data of persons not at least 100 years dead. Becker is a VERY common name here, so you couldn't possibly write letters to everybody named Becker. In Bingen a.R. there are 51 Beckers listed. Doing research in Preussen is even more difficult, because Preussen was very large and some parts of Preussen are now in Poland. (Sorry about all that.) Since our following emails are probably of no interest to OHMONROE we should direct mail. So long Henry Dipl.-Ing. Henry Foster ** henry@foster-net.de ** Fachbereich Elektrotechnik ** with the usual disclaimers ** Universitaet Kaiserslautern ** pgp 2.6.3i - finger: ** 67653 Kaiserslautern ** 21 56 3e eb 14 43 21 e7 ** Germany ** 44 cf 6a 39 75 6c f6 8f **