dear researchers, let me introduce myself, my name is Ralf Stutzenberger, live here in Germany, origined in Ketsch, a village at the other side of the river rhine, opposite of Speyer. I research my family in Kaiserslautern and at the moment I do my research in Speyer in the "Landesarchiv". There are three archives in Speyer: one Landesarchiv and two church archives. They are different! Very different. Have a look at the homepage of the Landesarchiv http://www.landeshauptarchiv.de/speyer/ and here you can see in Parts what you can find there: http://www.archivdatenbank.lha-rlp.de/ Particular the civil-records of many many towns of the soutern Rheinland-Pfalz are kept here and can be researched without cost by yourself. They make you copys for paying a small fee. But else several churchbooks are kept here in a copy To get informations about immigrants from the Pfalz you should else try to contact the "Institut fuer pfaelzische Geschichte und Volkskunde" in Kaiserslautern. They keep a big "Auswanderungskartei mit rund 300.000 Blaetter" (300,000 filecards of immigrants) and are willing to help you with your first steps on your research. For checking german phrases you should look here: http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ regards Ralf (Stutzenberger)