If you are lucky enough to have found a village name for your ancestors, you are still not out of the woods as it can be daunting to determine where that village is or was. Many towns have similar or identical names. Here are some helpful sites: http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/index.htm If you know that your ancestors came from village "A" near larger village "B", you first locate the coordinates for village "B". Then set the mileage indicator to show the coordinates for "B", and the resulting search for "A" will show each village's distance from "B". For example, I knew that "Dzwiersno" was near Naklo. I set the coordinates on the search page for Naklo, and I found that Dzwierszno Wielkie was nearby. It turned out that that was the village I was seeking. There were many variations of Dzwierszno, all over the Polish map. http://www.feefhs.org ; large site with a great search engine http://www.mapquest.com/ ; click on Maps icon, then change the Country to the one you're searching, then search by village name http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp ; search for microfilms, the largest set of genealogy records in the world If you're seeking vital records in the old country, your best bet is going to be ordering the microfilms at an LDS Family History Center (FHC) near you. Records were often located at the nearest larger town, but unfortunately the LDS website does not show which small towns are recorded in each bigger town. The FEEFHS site attempts to index those record locations, but its list is far from complete. If you've never gone to an FHC you're missing out on a lot. The larger FHCs may have all the census records for your state, and tons of unexpected treasures such as immigration records, vital records for the US and for overseas countries, sets of the expensive Family Tree Maker CD-ROMs, the list goes on and on. The smaller FHCs can have much less data on hand, but may hold surprising things; one near my house focuses on Irish ancestry and has a lot of data not readily available even at the large FHC further away. Before going, search the Familysearch.org website shown above, and come prepared with a list of the films you'd like to see. Our small FHC was able to tell me which of the records are on permanent hold at the large FHC, saving me an unnecessary trip now and then. Renting a microfilm (if they don't already have it) costs $3.50. Some FHCs will allow you to send in your request and check by mail, saving you one visit. (There is no cost for going to an FHC, or fo! r accessing any of their permanent data collection.) Happy hunting! Deb Gunther