thank you, Caroline, my head is muddled from a long and trying day, I must have missunderstood the post as advice to finding individuals rather than complete parish copies. still, when one doesn't know even the parish-even the county/shire for certain, that returns us to the original problem. if I seem impatient, I am starting to be, I've been struggling with research for 20 years and recently found my health to be failing severely. at this point in time my generation in our family are, at best, mostly still putting chikdren through school-middle through college, and I may die before anyone is ready to take on the research. I'd like to have found the people who have caused me the most difficulty; my 3x and 4x great grandmothers, Hannah Smith b. 12 Dec. 1785 of Colchester and Elizabeth Richards b. abt 1758+-2yrs of Colchester and possibly Lawford, my 6x great grandparents Matthew Hawkins b. abt 1685 of Colchester and possibly Coggshall and Hannah Gage b. abt 1685 of Colchester. not to mention people outside of Essex in England and even further affield, people in pre WWI Europe. I can see that I can order some records, though I have no proof that any of these people were born where they have, or seem to have, connections, and all of the places mentioned have many parishes. it will not be easy to sort the right parish out. Cornelia On Thu 04/14/11 11:21 PM , "Caroline Bradford" [email protected] sent: > > how do we know the film number if the record is not in the IGI???? Easy. Go to www.familysearch.org [1] (which is now the new site - not a pilot any more) and click on the "Library Catalog" tab. Search for the place name you are interested in. A list of categories will appear. Click on the one you are interested in and it will give you a list of the relevant resources. Click on one and full details will be shown, including the film number. HTH Caroline Links: ------ [1] http://www.familysearch.org