began an avalanche! :-) but reading through the replies is *very* interesting - keep them coming and thanks. The first thing I am going to do is go through Lewis 1837 and see where he tells us that there was mining of any sort going on in Ireland at that time - I've often seen people ask on mail lists where there were mines in this or that county - and we don't have that many mines nowadays, and we didn't when I was learning geography and history at school - but, according to Lewis we had a fair amount of it going on through the whole country. I remember a piece on somewhere in Wicklow where he said that gold had been found and he spoke of the numbers of people who went to Wicklow to find gold. I remember telling myself to send that to the general lists - Ireland-L and Y-IRL with the subject line Gold Rush - don't know if I ever did or not. Anyway......I'm going to begin with a list of where the mines were according to Lewis - then I'm going to look at all the posts I've received either thorugh lists or off list and see which counties people say their ancestors came from or which parts of Donegal and where they went to.......and whether there seems to be any connection on a time line............ and if it looks like they left a certain part of Ireland and went to a certain place during a particular time frame - then I'll take a look at the newspapers of the time for the place they left from or originated and see if any ads were in those papers at that time. and that lot - will keep me busy for a while. Once I have the list of places that there were mines of some sort in Ireland put together, then I'll post that to the general lists, and put it on my web site - and I will post whatever I have found Donegal to the Donegal lists. I will try to get to people individually over the next week or so. I dived in right at the deep end with this one, but it is looking extremely interesting. Thank you Jane