>Hi! Bill, > >Read your posting and was a little confused until I concluded that the area >you are describing must have been old Virginia now West Virginia. > >My Great-great-grandfather, Henry Easter (formerly Oster), was born 3 Sep 1800 >in/near Paw Paw, Hampshire Co, VA/WV. He married a gal named Nancy Fleming b. >"1808" in/near Romney, Hampshire Co, VA/WV. We have pretty good information >about their descendants and generally good information about his father, >grandfather and great-grandfather. We know virtually nothing about Nancy. >She is the marriage record, she has a death record, we know their children, we >know her reported place of birth, we know her place of death and spot of >burial, but we don't know anything about her parents, siblings, etc etc etc > >Would you have any information or suggestions on how I could reach into her >past? > >Thanks > >Russ Ehler > Hi, Russ, I don't have your gal in my database or her marriage. My first suggestion is that instead of telling me what information you have, give me the information. Enter the equivalent to a family group sheet with biographical sketches or whatever so it will be in my database. Secondly, send it to the list instead of to me. Everybody out there has a different set of files that you can check. Thirdly, although your concentration is your line, in your research, you find all sorts of stuff that is about other lines than yours that you hang onto for some reason or other, send that out as well as your own data (separate messages, please, we don't want your entire database in one letter.) This gives you the opportunity to become a resourse that other researchers are aware of and when they come across stuff of interest to you, they'll recognize it and send it to you. Fourthly, when you do have data on a place and time, it can be worth your while to do exhaustive research on the area, get to know everyone of your surname in the county, and you may find that people you've ignored because the're not your particular person may be their entire family, and add another couple generations to what you know. Fifthly, go beyond the vital stats. Churches, particularly, can be immensly rich resourses, a lot of the old ones kept detailed record, thanks to Henry the VIII and the Church of England. Being a State Church, you had to prove your allegiance by demonstrating your religion. Events were recorded so you could point to the record and say you did this. This carried over to the dissident churches, out of habit, I suppose, Quakers being the exemplar case. Sixth, have fun doing it. Learn stuff, go places, meet people, examine artifacts. Good luck, Bill [email protected]