Pennsylvania German Index

Well, now that I have got this blog started, I guess I had better fill it with something meaningful. About three years ago, I was researching quite a bit in the 1700s in Pennsylvania. Most of this research dealt with German immigrants, a large percentage of Pennsylvania's population at that time. There were quite a few authors (Burgert, Hacker, Yoder, etc.) who had connected German immigrants with passenger lists found in Strassberger and Hinke's book, Pennsylvania German Pioneers and residences in Pennsylvania. Strassberger's book is extremely helpful in locating these particular immigrants and those they travelled with. Often, they travelled in groups from the "old" country and settled close together in the "new" country. Every time I would search for a German family, I would look at about 20-25 books in search of the immigrant and a German place of origin. After about the third or fourth time searching, I started asking other Pennsylvania German researchers about indexes to these various works. I was met with a "wouldn't THAT be nice!" So, out of frustration I began to extract names from these various works, in and out of print, borrowing from friends and colleagues. Thus began the creation of my index. This index now has about 8,400 names and is still growing. I can sort it by name, ship or even place of origin. I hope to be able to publish this in the near future, but it is hard to know when to stop collecting names. By the way, this index has resulted in several breakthroughs on my research as well as in the research of others. This will be my first foray into the world of genealogical publishing. I just hope it isn't too grueling!