It is with a certain amount of trepidation that I post this reply to the various emails in response to my initial posting! The reason for my posting in the first place was I had conflicting information on Thomas and Sarah and their children and I naively thought that it might be better to put the minimum of information rather than lead people down the same conflicting alley I had been - how wrong was I! Add to this the difficulty I am finding with this branch of my tree since it is close to the borders of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire with children often born in one county and christened in another adds another level of complexity to contend with. With no access to the relevant census information and a mixed level of coverage by the IGI of the three counties, I was also hoping by this posting I might be able to locate somebody else researching the same people With regard to the length of time between the initial posting and this reply the answer is quite straightforward - I only receive the daily digests - I am having to research my tree over 8 counties (most at the other end of England to me) and so decided that the digest was the most sensible way of doing this Many thanks for all the help received with this and previous postings and hope to be in a position to help fellow researchers as and when Rick Smith

Hello Rick, I'm very sorry you had the misfortune to've posed your question at an inopportune moment - I've been on the BDF List for several years now, and this is the first nasty spat I've noticed on it (very different from some of the others I've been on from time to time). It's one of the friendlier and more-helpful ones, and I especially regret that I was the - equally-unintentional - instigator of the present unrest only the previous day. Sadly, you innocently got caught in the cross-fire. I wish it hadn't happened - and especially regret my fumbling paste-in of an address on an intended off-list communication which merely served to add further fuel. The root of the difficulty is that e-mailing, while excellent for transmitting information, isn't an efficient method of *communicating*. With a telephone there's the extra layer of intonations - and face-to-face the further addition of 'body language' - both of which give many extra clues to interpret what is wanted to be put across. But here there's nothing but the bare words - so the recipient has to make a fair amount of guesses, with the inevitable result that several of those are apt to be wrong. Which can - as here - all-too-rapidly produce a chain reaction :-( I'll be the first to accept that posing a question isn't easy - and that e-mailing adds to the difficulty by being so easy to use while at the same time impossible to recall once the button's been pressed.... The [unattainable] ideal is to state what's wanted to be known and what's already been done [with sufficient detail so that the recipent[s] can either check or not duplicate] - while at the same time hold the reader's attention long enough, and still be concise. [And not rabbitting-on to excess as I'm doing here - because I can't see how to shorten it while still keeping the sense!] I hope that - despite the unpleasantness that went with it - you at least got partial answers to your initial question, for you did get replies, in seeming contrast to the one you posed on the Bucks List. [There you share my experience, for I got zero replies to mine, posted about a month ago...] I also understand the difficulties where Ancestors are boundary-hoppers - most of mine were in the Disputed Lands where GLS, OXF, WAR & WOR all met and intermingled, with most of the parishes now having been transferred to Counties other than where they were at 'my' relevant time. I'm fortunate to the extent that I can easily get to WOR RO, but that was the least-used County at all stages... Best wishes, Gus It is with a certain amount of trepidation that I post this reply to the various emails in response to my initial posting! The reason for my posting in the first place was I had conflicting information on Thomas and Sarah and their children and I naively thought that it might be better to put the minimum of information rather than lead people down the same conflicting alley I had been - how wrong was I! Add to this the difficulty I am finding with this branch of my tree since it is close to the borders of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire with children often born in one county and christened in another adds another level of complexity to contend with. With no access to the relevant census information and a mixed level of coverage by the IGI of the three counties, I was also hoping by this posting I might be able to locate somebody else researching the same people With regard to the length of time between the initial posting and this reply the answer is quite straightforward - I only receive the daily digests - I am having to research my tree over 8 counties (most at the other end of England to me) and so decided that the digest was the most sensible way of doing this Many thanks for all the help received with this and previous postings and hope to be in a position to help fellow researchers as and when Rick Smith