While on my hunt for information pertaining to my HOFENGARTNER line I was given an email address to contact for further information.  After I got that email address I decided to do a little digging  before I sent off any requests for help.

I wanted to make sure that who/what  I was sending a request to (plus money) if the information from the forum post was correct was reliable.  Having just an email address to send a request for genealogy data did not sit well at first.

Thats were I found this website: GedBas.de

It was linked to a whole bunch of PDF's listing German Surnames.   At first I thought I would have had to go through each PDF to see if I had any other family listed on that site.  But after Google Translate did its magic I saw the link to Gedbas.de

The site is very basic but it gets the point across, you click "New Search" on the left hand side, and it loads up a query page.  You put in the information (SURNAME) or other info (PLACE/FIRST NAME) and click "Search". If they have information in their database about what you are searching for they will provide you with an AL number to request further information from them. Additionally they provide you with any other names that are associated with the AL number.

The one for HOPFENGARTNER has about 15 names associated with it (with me knowing about 8 of them) I am hoping that it will lead to the parents of Lorenz and possible the names of his wife parents (Maria Zucker).

They website also lists a lot of other database's that I have not looked into yet (Tombstones, Cards, ect) Maybe in a follow up I will address them.