Here's an unusual method of searching that has surprisingly resulted in finding 2 ancestors (my grandfather's sister, and my grandmother's brother) for me recently. http://anybirthday.com/ It's to look up living people's birthdays, which is a lot of fun in itself. There's no fee to look up names, and just about everybody in the U.S. is listed! The database seems to be a few years old, which has been to the benefit of my research, since the aunt and uncle I found there passed away in 2002. The results show a person's birthday and zip code. I was actually looking for older family members whom I had heard (from my aunt) were probably still living. The birthdates confirmed to me if they were approximately the right age for the ancestors I was researching. I then checked their names and, with the zip code, their addresses, in www.411.com under "white pages" to look for their phone numbers. When I didn't find it, I checked the social security death index records and, VOILA! There they both were! The SSDI shows birthdate and last residence, to confirm info already acquired. I was fortunate enough to find two newspapers in their locality that I could check for their obituaries in, in the online archives. Their parents and other information matched up. And I found living relatives in the obituary to look up. Unfortunately, I found these two relatives too late to interview. But I did find my grandfather's sister, (what a wonderful surprise that was!) and was able to meet with her and get a lot of information. It was a nice visit. Anyway, this is what worked for me. I guess my point is, sometimes we have to get creative and not stick with just the standard routes. I have recommended to several people to type in just the surname and beginning zip code of the places where their ancestors came from, to see what names come up in the http://anybirthday.com site. It sometimes has interesting results. Margie "Margie" <margie92@earthlink.net>

> Here's an unusual method of searching that has surprisingly resulted > in finding 2 ancestors (my grandfather's sister, and my > grandmother's brother) for me recently. > > http://anybirthday.com/ > > <snip> > > "Margie" <margie92@earthlink.net> Thanks!D! I just tried this and found a cousin that was in Fl. Will write her a letter today. Thanks again for sharing. NEWBIES STICK TOGETHER Delores dcj@dmv.com