How many 4th cousins do you have?

[hfojvt]

12. neither do mine

in 7 of 16 lines I have no idea who the parents were, and maybe never will. Although as I think of it now, one of mom's great grandparents was said to have come over with her parents and siblings except that the parents died on the voyage. There may be a record of that on some ship's manifest.

In another line the children were born in Germany in the 1830s so it should be possible to find them. Maybe 100 years from now all the copies of German church records will be indexed and computerized. Actually the LDS church is apparently already doing that with some of the villages that I have done lots of work on from my mom's side.

In all of my research I have NEVER as they say, jumped the pond (the Atlantic Ocean). I have only found my ancestors in Europe because some other, older family member knew what villages I should search.