Hello Karen: If you have the correct date of birth and if it was in Luxembourg, it should be located even if you do not know the location in Lusembourg. The reason is that all or mostly all of the birth records are indexed. In the Tables Decennales(10 year indexes) They are indexes of the records of the local communes. A commune is a small subdivision of a canton(equivalent to a county, I would say). I guess the only surefire way to locate the birth record is to search all of the Indexes for the entire. This is not impossible, but there are around 100 communes, and some communes have changed in the last 100 years. At any rate, there are only 3 places that I know that you can conveniently do a searcy: 1, LDS Main Library at Salt Lake City, Utah 2, The Special Collections Library of St. Thomas College at St. Paul, Minnesota. 3, The Archives at Luxembourg(and that I am not sure about). If, after checking the following possibilities you find nothing then you really have no other recourse: a. Index of the Luxembourg Gazette Newpapers in the 2 vol. Set of Luxembourgers in the New World. b, Local Newpaper Obituary or other item found in a newspaper, c, a notation in a Catholic Church(usually) Record, Particularly a Marriage or a church census(Statis Annimarum) d, information from a legal record-- divorce record, Probate record of a relative, death record, possibly a naturalization intent. e, query of the Luxembourg Society Newsletters-Luxembourg Scoiety Society of Wisconsin, Luxembourg News of America(Illinois) and the genalogical society in Luxembourg, I believe the headquarters are in Mersch, Luxembourg. f,Petitions of Luxembourgs(in possession, I believe, of Jean-Claude Muller in Luxembourg). For details of the petitions see Luxembourgers in the New World, (New Series) vol. One. g, It sometimes helps to know the origins of other Luxembourgers in the area where you ancestor lived, as they sometimes migrated in groups from the same area of origin. h. In the Luxembourg Gazette, there are subscriber lists( unindexed I am sure) and sometimes they reveal subscriptions bought for relatives in Luxembourg. I have seen many, many of these in the first years of its publication. i. Possibly a local area or church history of where your ancestor lived in the US. j. There were ocasional Luxembourg obituaries in German Language Newspapers such as DER WANDERER, etc. If all this fails then you have to institute a search. In addition the following site has a somewhat help search engine(although Hoffman/Hoffmann is a very common name) to help you pinpoint possible areas of origin. The site is now free online and is: http://www.lib.stthomas.edu/cgi/luxdec.exe The database is limited to surnames only is covers 1853-1863, but it helps. If all else fails(and I am sure I may have overlooked something) then you would have to institute an area search. Also be wary that sometimes the birthdate of your ancestor may be off a day or so as the indexes record the date the event was recorded!! at the civil registry. I certainly hope this helps somewhat. Bob Olson