Just a few comments this evening, before wishing everyone a wonderful Memorial Day... I was at the cemetery here in Orange County, CA, looking for another ancestor...not Coats, but was rather surprised when the Cemetery personnel asked me if I was looking for a marked grave...apparently there are quite a few unmarked graves...now, that doesn't mean they don't know who's there, it just means it has no head stone...so when doing reseach and you can't find a marker make sure it's not an unmarked grave but the cemetery has the records... I also contacted a cemetery in KS and was surprised they had records back to 1883...someone somewhere takes care of the records...in my case it was one person in the town that had the records...needless to say everyone knew him...<g>...all they had on record was the death date...I was so amazed they even had records back to that date I don't recall if they had the birth date as well...I was looking for parent names...but that they didn't have... I also contacted a funeral home last week I was busy...<g>...I was amazed at the information they have, apparently they need to keep a lot of info...I was also amazed that they will send that info to you and in my case at no charge...isn't that a pleasant change...<g>... one of the records I was looking for was a parents name for the deceased and they had it...right there in their records...a lot of funeral homes didn't start til the early 1900s but some people born in the late or mid 1800s didn't die till the 1900s...so this is another good source for info...there is a web sit... www.funeralnet.com I think it is...that will give you the address and phone number of both funeral homes and cemeteries by state, county or city.... At least in OK and KS they were most helpful.... Now, have a wonderful Memorial Day and remember this is a hobby...<g>... Char ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com