[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] EWZ/BDC Research

[Dale Mattis]

I agree with everyone who has praised this great research tool.  My
experience was that in the EWZ file I looked at, the first and last
names of the applicant were always complete, the parents of the
applicant were just about always complete, but the grandparents names
(particularly of the applicant's spouse if the spouse wasn't applying,
too)were often surnames only.

I mention this because if your ancestors came to the the US or Canada 2
or 3 generations before the EWZ applicant did the paperwork, you may
well find people with the same surname, but you may be less successful
in establishing clear family connections because of missing first names
in the EWZ records.  

It is easier to make connections with rarer surnames than common
surnames - I had better luck looking for my NIKOLAIs than I did looking
for my ARNDTs, for example.  Believe it or not there was more than 1 
August Arndt in the records!  :-)

This won't help those out west much, but if you can get to the archives
in College Park, MD to do the research, the facilities are great, and
the films are shelved where you can get at them yourselves.  You can
move through the films relatively quickly.