As for my father's side, my aunt did a lot of research over a long period of time and apparently traced our name a really long way back. I'm not sure of the year, but from what I know, she traced it back to a man that was an orphan and had been taken in. When he was grown, a group of raiders I believe to be Cossacks destroyed the village and he was among the few survivors. The name of the village had been Ransleben and he took it for his surname since he never knew his parents and in honor of the memory of the village and it's inhabitants.