Peter Janda

Hi Sandra. If you want to find your ancestor in records overseas you must have the name of the village that they came from, or at least the parish. All records are organized according to the region of the village. Unfortunately, there is no grand index where you can look up a name. Here is a link to some hints on what kind of records to look at if you need to discover the village of origin. https://cgsi.org/resources/intro-research/which-records-search Perhaps you have already looked at these types of records. I would encourage you to go local if you must, looking at the records held in the American towns in which they settled. Church records and small local papers are not usually covered by the super huge databases at Ancestry or Family Search. Also talk to cousins who might have letters, or other papers from these immigrants. Sometimes looking at Ancestry family trees or Family Search World Tree will lead you to others who already know this critical fact about your ancestor. -Judi