Hi Sharon. Thanks so much for your reply. I don't have much at all on him, but here goes: His name is John Julius AMONS (but could possibly be AMMONS). A marriage was found in the Cincinnati, Ohio newspaper on Feb 5, 1858, stating he married on Feb 4 to Mary Inez SMITH. They had a son, also named John Julius who is buried at Wesleyan cemetery in Cincinnati. In 1868 his wife is a widow of a second husband by the last name of GUILD, which was tracked thru her burial location, with her death in 1907 - so it's assumed husband #1 (AMONS/Ammons) had died rather soon after the marriage although they had two children. There's been no death information or burial location found for John in the Cincinnati area and I'm assuming he went to war with a death and burial location unknown (so far). I'd like to find out what happened to him and hopefully get some leads to his parents. One step would be ordering military records, but there are many choices for the name/s and I don't know if his parents are from or lived in the Ohio area during that time period. I also don't know if he would have fought for the north or south. I'm hoping there is some way to narrow down choices to order military records to cut the cost with all the possibilities. Thanks! Donna -----Original Message----- From: Sharon Workman [mailto:workman@dreamscape.com] Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 8:09 PM To: CIVIL-WAR-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [CIVIL-WAR] Record Search: Narrow Down? Donna, Why don't you give us the particulars and let some of us take a look? Maybe someone coming to your puzzle with a fresh approach might get lucky! Name, dates, places.... And what in particular are you after? Sharon