Hi Vera, I have followed your postings on several mailing lists. The Białystok area was in Grodno gubernia, not Russian Poland during this time, so Prussia-Roots is probably not the best mailing list to seek answers on. Ciechanowiec and Białystok would have been in Russia, Russia. Not Prussia. That being said, through my research across Russian Poland, I am familiar with your family, have Carl's 1855 marriage in Białystok. You know, Ciechanowiec is some 67 km. SW of Białystok, so I am thinking, you should be looking in a Catholic parish. In Russian Poland, which I am a lot more familiar with, the law ALLOWED for the various religions (Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish etc) registering their own vital statistics from the year 1826. However, this did not become mandatory until the early 1840's. Around almost every Evangelisch-Augsburgisch church (Lutheran) in Russian Poland--and there are dozens of these--I can name a cluster of Catholic churches that contained Lutherans until 1826. Then, I can name a lesser number that continued registering Lutherans until the early 1840's. LDS has filmed records for the Catholic parish of Ciechanowiec. Try there! Al Muth Michigan On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Vera Miller <veramiller@verizon.net> wrote: > > Hello all, > > I am stuck in researching my Hoffmann and Lamprecht ancestry. > > My great-great-great-great-grandparents Carl Gottlieb Hoffmann and > Catharine > Lamprecht had a son, Carl, in 1835 in Ciechanowiec near Bialystok. I > cannot > find Carl Jr. in church records. Bialystok archives has records starting > in > 1847. Latvia archives has records from 1834-1875. > > Does anyone know if records earlier than 1834 exist? > > Thanks, > > Vera > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > PRUSSIA-ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >