I recently received an interesting email from another descendant of Georg Merck which surprised me.  This gentleman resides in Poland and he described how an ancestor had emigrated from Alsace to Poland at approximately the same time as my ancestor had emigrated from Alsace to Ukraine.  At the time, early 1800s, both of those areas were under Russian control.  Just after I read his email I got another email from his sister who now resides in Seattle WA.  Her mother, a Merk, now lives with her in the USA.  It has been interesting to do the research to show how our families connect back about two hundred years ago.  What a small world this has become since those two Mercks left Alsace.  Since I posted my research data (merckfamily.org) on the the internet I have heard from members of the family residing in France, Germany, Canada, Poland and the USA.