A few weeks ago I asked the List if anyone could advise me about the commercial sources of personal data (and received a lot of advice to leave them alone) in order to get some missing information on a relative. I had the date of his death, 1944, but did not know where he was buried or who in the way of family might be buried with him. Neglecting him for the time being I asked a cousin in Toronto to call at the office of a cemetery fairly close to him and find out when "un-named twins" were buried in a family grave I already know something about. He got this information and whatever else he could find on the record card and decided to look for the mother, a Dorward, not knowing that she had been born in Aberdeenshire, been recorded as Durward (as they tend to do there) and used that form of her surname all her life. So naturally her record was didn't turn up (she is in the family plot). So, thinking he had maybe got her first name wrong, he asked if there were any other Dorwards in the cemetery and was stunned to find that the missing man was buried in another part of the same cemetery as his sister. So I am one step down the road on that person. I have also recently traced another missing relative in Canada by a pure fluke. I got a copy of a very detailed obituary giving the married surnames of the lady's children and grandchildren. Two of the grandchildren have unusual surnames so I figured that it would be easier to single them out as there might only be two or three families. I looked at Canada411 (on-line telephone directory) and found only one entry in the whole of the country for one of them ... and with the right initial. I wrote to him/her and got an e-mail reply from her mother checking me out! After a short exchange of information it turned out I had got the right family and was put in touch with her grand-mother, the person I was looking for. This was thanks to two spelling errors. The Toronto "Globe & Mail" (or the undertaker) had spelt the surname wrongly in the obituary and Canada411 had made the same mistake in the grand-daughter's entry. But for these errors I would never have found this family. In this game you never know where the next bit of information will come from! Cheers, Bruce D