BGosling-- Don't want to discourage any one hunting for ancestors, but I suspect you have not been at this very long. You give us precious little info to go on so no one can dip into the magic well and come up with your Bates line. Tracing ancestry means working back from what you know to the great mysteries of the past. Along the way you need to dig a lot into things like the Federal census, marriage records, death certificates, obituaries, funeral home records, newspaper accounts, wills, deeds, state and county tax records etc. Sound imposing? It is, but you will surprise yourself at how much you can dig up and verify in the records. If, as I suspect, you are very new at this great detective game, you need help, help, help. Fortunately for you, there exists in almost every county in this big country, a Family History Center (FHC) operated in a building next to a Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon), often called LDS. Start your search for such a church in the phone directory and /or the phone company information service. When you find one, go there and observe film reader-printers, computers with CDs to search, census film, and helpful volunteers who will get you started and point you in the right direction. They won't do the work for you. That's your job, but they will turn you into a pretty good researcher in no time at all. AND, the big PLUS is, they have catalogs of all the holdings of the greatest genealogical library in the world, The Family History Library at Salt Lake City, Utah. And you can order film and copies of any of it for very little money. Good Luck and let us know how you make out. Jack Bates