From: JJupar@aol.com > Marcelle, > > You language is appalling and if you were on my list I would unsub > you. > > You must realise that you can't just look up a date like that. Many > of us have to pay subscriptions to various outlets and the cost is a > reasonable amount of money. Where do you think we are going to > look it up. At our expense? We can't just pop down the road or up > the street to do it. > > We have got computers the same as you and have to work it out the > hard way. > Have you been to your nearest LDS centre where you will find films > of various church records, your included. Have you looked on the > IGI _www.familyreasearch.org_ (http://www.familyreasearch.org) > > You are obviously unaware of netiquette and need to do some reading > up. I think Marcelle, like many others, especially newcomers, suffers from two problems when approaching research..... 1) What I call the "modern mindset" syndrome. 2) The idea that Britain is a tiny little country where everyone knows - and knew - everybody else! The very first thing one has to do when approaching genealogical research is to put all present-day ideas and approaches and attitudes totally out of mind. You have to "feel" and project your way into the minds of your ancestors, try and imagine how they felt and thought in the 19th century - in effect, regard them as virtually living on another planet since attitudes and conditions were so totally and utterly different. This means that things like names, ages, places, addresses, etc, were not stabilised, not settled, not sacrosanct and could vary very considerably. This entails using substantial amounts of lateral thinking to find them. Secondly, Marcelle lives in Australia which is a geographically huge country, many times larger than Britain, but in terms of population still has less than one-third the population of Britain - and in the mid-19th century the vast population gulf would have been much greater. Marcelle obviously does not realise that to talk vaguely about a Joseph Drury born "about 1832" at Stockton is largely meaningless in terms of finding a later marriage, especially when there were so many Joseph Drurys around. In the 1861 census alone there were 36 Joseph Drurys and if one includes close variants the number goes up to 68. I posted in a separate message details of 30 Joseph Drurys married between 1853 and 1880. To check out every single one of these marriages and try and relate the Joseph Drury concerned to the one born "about 1832", using census returns and other sources, could involve many, many months of research! However, Marcelle seems to think it's all so simple. This is what I have been at some pains to explain. I am, BTW, grateful to those who have supported me in this thread. I don't believe Marcelle has had a single message of support - not in the list, anyway. -- Roy Stockdill Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE