BRONWYN (I like that name) ~ thanks for your boost of support. My husband thinks I'm already obsessed and that genealogy is a colossal waste of time. Sometimes I have to 'sneak' it! It makes it more difficult if I have to go to the historical society. Luckily, I've ended up living right in the middle of where most of my mother's people came from - from Albany to Wayne Co, PA and I'm right here. Believe me, I never took genealogy into account when I moved here. I only know about the LDS records because my mom became a Mormon and I found that most, but not all the material she submitted was correct. Otherwise, I would have assumed that the information on IGI & FamilySearch was documented "proof". She did give me the step I needed, though, to get started. And transcriptions...although I am heartily grateful to all those volunteers that poured over blurry, mis-spelled photos of documents, some were not as well transcribed as others. Look at the originals, if you can, to see if you agree with the transcription. AUDREY ~ Places names in the German Empire changed many times as the flow of politics washed back and forth over the area and borders were re-drawn and languages and alphabets changed. Try these sites to see if you can discover what the name of that town might be today: The JewishGen ShtetlSeeker (Town Seeker) - synonyms for villages in the German Empire, Russia, Turkey (don't be surprized if they changed radically over time): http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/ East & West Prussia Gazetteer (with links to other German Empire areas and information): http://www.progenealogists.com/germany/prussia/pru-p.htm Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 version, has a bunch of European cities listed with social studies type information (governement of the time, major industries, etc.): http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/ GENERAL PASSENGER LIST CAVEAT ~ I just found out the hard way that NOT ALL the passenger records at the www.castlegarden.org site were from ships that landed in New York. My GF is recorded there, so I spent a whole day traveling to the Manhattan branch of the National Archives (where the people are knowledgeable and very helpful), but try as we might, "his" ship, the Wiemar landing on 22 Apr 1891, was just not on the roll of film that it should have been. The librarians all discussed this and went in different directions to try to find out what happened. After a while they told me that the ship did indeed land on that date, but in BALTIMORE. They don't have the film rolls for Baltimore, so I had to content myself with the "Germans to America" entry. Wasted road-trip! Additionally, many records were left out of the "G to A" volumes. If you want to find out what records and what to do, read this article at the Research Center for German Emigrants in the USA at the Universität Oldenburg: http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/nausa/onceag.htm. The home page for the Research Center is: http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/nausa/onceag.htm . The pages themselves are in English, though the online books, etc, are in German. They have great links to other passenger list sites and German archives. They also sell a cool repro of an 1853 map many German bought at the time that shows them American destination cities (in German) with the sailing routes of the time. Others are 1900 maps of the German Empire. So much data, so little time! Keep a bouyant outlook, Julia "----Original Message Follows---- From: prussia-roots-request@rootsweb.com A timely reminder, and hopefully a warning to those who think all their research can be done (sometimes instantly) on the Internet! LDS Filming gives so many of us the chance to research records that would otherwise be inaccessible, but other secondary sources such as the IGI and transcriptions on other sites always need careful checking before they can be considered 'facts'. Good luck in your research - genealogy has become rather an obsession with me so perhaps you may like to heed that warning!! You seem to have a very good foundation for your work, so all the best for the future. Kind regards, Bronwyn Klimach. I can not find Rittberg on the map I can find Reitberg says Rittberg - Nordrhew - Westfale - Germany thanks for any info Audery Bowne Seattle acbowne1@yahoo.com" _________________________________________________________________ Mortgage rates near historic lows. Refinance $200,000 loan for as low as $771/month* https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h27f8&disc=y&vers=689&s=4056&p=5117