Hi, Missing Lincs, I see that neighboring Leicestershire is having a "rash" of gardening tool thefts. So make sure that you don't leave your banged up, rusty old spouse out in the yard where they might be "lifted". I'm sure that most of my missing gardening tools were used by my children as playthings, then hidden so that I wouldn't notice. That might also explain the imbalance in my dinnerware set. Several odd forks that don't match and a lack of dinner knives. Now that they've all moved out, perhaps we should finally use the silver. Maybe I should hire an archaeologist! How's that family history work coming along? How can the list help? Have you tried some of the non-traditional sources like tax lists, Rolls of Honour, newspaper articles? I found a relative in the poor law records that Anne COLE worked so hard to document. Thank you, thank you, Anne. What's your excuse? Tell the boss that your great, great grandmother died and that you need two weeks off for the funeral. We won't tell him that she died 38 years ago. but you get your notepad and pencil down to the Archives and ask for help finding her. Then tell us how succesful you were. Make us jealous. Me? I've been working on the War Memorials for Leicestershire this month. The county and several district councils decided to support an effort to document all those memorials and they've done a great job so far. But they have the same problems we have. People show up on a memorial with no apparent link to the local parish. Or they get a name like "L MILLS", but there is no "L MILLS" in Commonwealth War Graves registration. If you EVER find one of your relatives on a war memorial or Roll of Honour, make sure that we know who he is and where he or she is from. I remember years ago I was in charge of a payroll system that wanted us to use two initials and the surname for each eamployee. I had a Susan S SANDS and a Sharon S SANDS, so the system wouldn't work well for us and they would fight over who got which cheque. Since Susan was the first one hired, we put her into the system as S SANDS and her sister as S S SANDS. All worked fine after that. (Except that I w! anted to call Sharon "Steamship" because of her initials.) Of course, this was before I ran into the guy with just one name. You will find "institutions" in England that recorded census records with entries like "MILLS L" and no Christian names at all. Workhouses and Militry barracks were commonly done this way. It waa just done to frustrate you. I know my American friends get upset when they find an old English phone book and all their relatives are listed with just one or two initials. Tough, that's the way it was. Heck, we don't even use phonebooks anymore! Remember, the Archives may want a photo to give you a reader card. Have fun and smooth researching. Lou (list admin.)