-----Original Message----- >From: DEL <Lstaskiel@comcast.net> > >Hello all listers. >I am in the USA, actively researching the above surname. >I am a direct descendant of Albert Bessel Lorenz Berend LORCK. He is my grandfather. >His AFN file number is IBQH-IKQ. >The LORCK family has a huge ancestral file. Del, I hope you have more to go on than the findings in Ancestral File from LDS. That database is pretty worthless and chock full of errors. You couldn't pay me to use info from it. I volunteered at an LDS FHC for 10 years. LDS has two main databases, the IGI and Ancestral File. The IGI is based upon church member submissions and extraction projects. Through my experience, I would guess that the IGI has about a 75% to 85% accuracy rate. The Ancestral File was created purely from family contributions from John Q. Public. There was zero done by LDS to verify anything in it. If it has a 50% accuracy rate I'm richer than Bill Gates. I tried to help far too many FHC patrons over the years verify information from an Ancestral File finding and it didn't take long to find erroneous information. It won't take long to find your family tree full of someone else's ancestors using Ancestral File. Sure, we all want clues to our ancestry, but if the source is that full of errors a researcher will end up spending more time chasing dead ends than they would if they followed proper research methodology. >My grandfather emigrated to England, and became a British subject in 1899. >He had various addresses in and around London until approx. 1930. >I last found him mentioned in the latest British census with my grandmother >FANNY (Hutchings) LORCK. >I have not found a marriage cert for them. Nor have I been able to find >his death cert. in England. My mother claimed he was residing in a home for >the blind when she emigrated to the USA in 1930. You don't have near enough information yet, Del, to locate your grandfather in German records. You need to exhaust records for his time in England, first. To find ancestors in German records, a researcher needs 1.) Name and date of birth of the ancestor, 2.) City/town/village of origin, and 3.) Names of parents or siblings to use as confirming information. All of this information can be found 90% of the time in the records of the immigrant's new country. Trying to find them in German records before having this information will prove a tremendous waste of time. >I am looking now to find present day relatives from his family in Germany. >It occurs to me he might have returned to Germany. >In my research to date no member of this family emigrated to the USA. except my mother. >Kindly suggest in which direction I should concentrate on to find these relatives. This is premature, Del. You need to find the three pieces of info I listed above and then locate your grandfather in German records. From there you can trace the family forward in order to locate present day relatives. Without that information and without following that process, "connecting" with any relatives online will have the same amount of accuracy as simply typing in all the entries for LORCK from the German telephone book. I don't think you want that. I think you want to find your ancestors and find true current day relatives. Focus on records for your grandfather in England. He may or may not have died there, but he certainly spent a great part of his life there. Did he become a British subject? If so find his naturalization papers. Did he ever get a passport? You might look for that first because they would lead to the naturalization papers. What about church records? The 1901 and 1911 census? Did he serve in the military? Many questions to be answered before delving into German records and finding the current day family. It would probably be a wise investment to purchase a book on British research. After all, how will you find the answers you seek if you don't know where to look? Even with the Internet, what you want to accomplish is not a fast process. It took me 3 years, and 6 years, respectively to find and PROVE two branchs of the family in Germany and then go visit them. We won't even talk about the almost 200 reels of microfilm I had to rent from LDS for this work. But to actually meet the current day family, and walk on the family farm where my ancestors were born were experiences beyond compare, especially when you can prove relationship. Good luck, LGO