Thanks to Mary Daily for alerting us to David Blackwell's "Free Books Online Effort". I checked out his "Records of the Town of Braintree (Massachusetts) 1640 to 1793 and would like to offer the following comments. It appears that, compared to what Frank Dyer is in the process of accomplishing with his presentation of the Bates records, the overall efforts are a duplication. The differences are in the way the material is organized and the ease of accessing particular records and facts. [The Blackwell pages] Scanned pages appear to have been OCR processed and converted to HTML. All the web pages are based on pages from Bates plus additional pages that Blackwell prepared for the Indexes. CONTENTS TOWN RECORDS, Page 1 to 625 BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS, 628 to 890 INDEX OF NAMES ON TOWN RECORDS, 891 to 911 " SUBJECTS, 912 " TOWNS, 918 " LOCAL PLACES, 919 " MARRIAGES, 921 " INTENTIONS OF MARRIAGE, 925 " BIRTHS, 929 " DEATHS, 935 " TOWNS, &C. 938 ERRATA, 940 For example, the Marriage Index begins on Pg 921 where Blackwell has listed the surnames alphabetically along with links to all the Bates pages that have marriage information for that surname. You need to scroll through each linked page for marriage information on the surname. Births, Deaths, etc. are handled the same way. [The Dyer Pages] To date, you will find the following links: Births 1640-1793 Marriages 1640-1793 Deaths 1640-1793 These are three separate databases (files) that Dyer has prepared from the Bates "pages". They are displayed in table form, arranged alphabetically by surname first and given name second, with the following headers: Surname Given Gender Birth Date Father Mother Page Errata, Comments I suspect that Frank may eventually break up these threee large files into I suspect that Frank may eventually break up these three large files into a number of separate files to improve browser loading time and may prepare an Index that will, at least, permit linking from letters A-Z to the surnames that start with those letters. Or, he may provide an index of surnames that will link directly to the first record for that surname. Maybe the user should view both the Blackwell and the Dyer pages and then decide which format they prefer to use. Fletch