Bill! Thank you very much for all that! I will try everything you have suggested! Lyn Freeman Bill Shute <bilshute@westnet.com.au> wrote: Dear Lyn, To try to find out if he is dead, type in Ryerson Index at your search engine. There are over 1.25 million entries there of death notices from various papers, in excess of 100. The paper you will probably be interested in is the Sydney Morning Herald which is the main paper in Sydney that death notices are published in. After browsing and noting details if you find one that is probably, go back to the main page again and near the browse button you will find a "Request a lookup" button which hopefully will get you the wording of the death notice. Just make sure you put the PUBLICATION date in your request not the death date. If he is not dead, then you need a lookup of the NSW Electoral Roll which is alphabetical at an Electoral Office on screen. It is not on the www for privacy reasons. ERSKINEVILLE is one of the very old suburbs of SYDNEY, only a hop, step and a jump from the centre of town. There are a lot of terrace houses there and the area is within the City Of Sydney Council district. Try www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au which is I think the council website. It may just be Sydney.nsw.gov.au too, I am not sure, but I wondered if you could email them to see if that house is in his name. They may not tell you for privacy reasons. Another way would be possibly write a letter. If you want to compose one and send it to me by email, I will post it from here and it should get there next day. Just a possibility. If he has died then the death notice should name the sons, most do. Then we will have to look for them on the Electoral Roll. Not as bad as SMITH possibly, but MARTIN is a name that appears in the records frequently. Sincerely,Bill Thank you to Bill, Mary, Peter, Marg and Jan for your very helpful replies. I will contact the newspapers and magazines as suggested. Marg said to put the details on the list, so here goes: --------------------------------- All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine