The Answers

1. A. Complete name
B. Date of an event in the "old country" that involved your ancestor.
C. Name of a relative in the homeland
E. The place of origin.

2. It depends on your ancestor's ethnic group, religious preference, time period of immigration and other factors.

3. The key principle is to be careful and thorough whenever you search a record–including in how you record what you searched.

4. You might find cities that share provincial, county, or state names; the name given might not be the place of birth but a port city; large cities may have many smaller areas were the person is recorded such as hundreds of church parishes; there are multiple places with the same name; the name given might be a geographic name that is not the name of a town or parish; and finally many towns have changed names due to governments changing.

5. Foreign terminology for son of daughter or anything else might be misinterpreted as an individiual’s name; a foreign versions of a place names can throw off a researcher, there could be spelling problems, and places with similar spellings which look different with the handwriting, e.g. Wuertemburg or Wittemburg.

6. Genealogy language word lists are available at Research Guide at www.FamilySearch.org; obtain a foreign map of the locality at the same time period to find the town names; and ask for assistance from a language or genealogy expert for that country. You may find an expert at your local Genealogy Society (check www.fgs.org for a list of societies).

7. The importance of the immigration year is what records might be available in the new country versus what might be available in the old one.

8. A. Name used when he and his family boarded the ship. (May be a foreign version of the given name that corresponds with the nationality of the port of departure.)
B. Name of ship. (May be found on a ship passenger index from Ancestry.com, or from the indexes based on the year of arrival found on U.S. records such as census records of 1900 to 1930.)
C. Port of arrival. (May be guessed by ancestor's residence near the time of arrival, or may be listed on a naturalization paper. Were they still an alien after 1940? Those naturalization papers are centralized and could be ordered. Also search the port indexes.)
D. Date of arrival

9. A. Indexes, both on microfilm at NARA in Washington, D.C., and on film from the Family History Library; and on-line at www.ancestry.com. Not all complete, so when you cannot find it in one place check the others.
B. Family records for naturalization certificate; on-line and microfilm naturalization indexes available through the FHLC.
C. Census records for the year of arrival, and approximate place.
D. USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service) records of alien registrations

10. Because of government laws, available technology for maintaining and preserving records, and natural disasters, not all records are the same for every time period. We must use different records and different strategies between what records exist in the new country and what we can use in the old country.

11. Do not proceed too quickly into such sources. You know a lot of information about the immigrant and his or her family in order to effectively use these foreign sources including the minimum identification listed under #1 above.

12. A. Search compiled records first
B. Search nationwide records
C. Search departure records
D. Localize the surname
E. Search surname books
F. Search regional records
G. Now search local records
This is also the time to get out those local methodology books on the country and put them to good use.