Russell Theis@CHEDSZURICH 13.03.99 01:04 Hi, People! I've noticed that many letters are from people looking for the villages or trying to correct their spellings of the places their ancestors came from. Arthur Teschler at the Uni in Giessen, Germany, has an excelent automated service that would probably help a lot of these people, because it accepts "wild-cards", It's an e-mail service which will respond with either: SPECIFICS (if you have requested a particular place) or a list of POSSIBILITIES (if you've used wild-cards) that you can choose from and resubmit. For example, if you're looking for Geichlingen, you can ask about: "Geichlingen" which will only list all the Geichlingens But if you're just know it's Geich-something, you can submit "Geich*" which will list all places starting with GEICH: Geichlingen, Geichenburg,Geichdorf, etc. "G*" which will list ALL places starting with -G-. With the wild cards, you see all the possibilites and can choose individual places in a second pass. Here, for example, is the result of a query for Werden: Prefix: Werden Werden Part of: Essen GKZ : 05 1 13 000 County : | | +---- Essen {E} (kreisfrei/independent) RegBez : | +------- D"usseldorf Land : +--------- Nordrhein-Westfalen ZIP : 45239 Locat : (Essen) 51d28m N 7d01m E Maps : TK25 4508 Essen TK50 L4508 Essen Euro Ha40 - If you haven't used this service before send a message to geo@genealogy.net with the single word INFO in the subject line. Thanks, Arthur! And good hunting, people! Russ in Zürich