Sandy, I thought the surname spelling of LINN, would surely pop-up with Germany, but "alas" it came up England. I put your Gggrandmother's name in my search for ancestry.com, I don't know when her birth date was, but I got a few hits for Maria LINN, from Germany, in Milwaukee area, census. I wrote in Darmstadt, Germany, for the message boards, and found 4, 000 plus messages with Darmstadt, Germany in the message. Oh, Darmstadt is located near Frankfurt, full "place name": Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany. Usually when you search overseas, one must look for the church records. I don't know if there were census records for Germany, but if you know which religion, Catholic or Protestant, that will start to put you on the correct path. I belong to a group of people that took one of the "classes" on rootsweb, I believe. It was about German research. I haven't looked at that information in years, but our group chats about many things "German". We just discussed finding church records, and how the Lutheran Church was called "evengelical" (German spelling of course), rather then Lutheran as we call it. I don't know if this information will advance your search any further. I just wanted to let you know, that you are "braver" then I. I've stopped at the "old country", just too much for me. I lived in Germany for almost 10 years on and off, with my military Hubby, too bad I wasn't into genealogy very much at that time. Though, this was before records were on line, almost before computers were in every home. We had a computer, but it was for playing games..pac-man and dig-dug, etc. OOPS, getting off subject, sorry :-) Cindy, in Denver, CO. _________________________________________________________________ The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes is here. Get all the scoop. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/?icid=nctagline2