Hi -I most definitely meant to encourage you all to pass this on to any other list that might find it of interest. And if you send me a note with the name of that list, I'd appreciate knowing. connie Now, here's the Utilization Factor--thanks to Ed Pollock--who responded to my posting with the following, which provides us all with an idea of what the JPs might add to our genealogical research. JP Records One point about JPs are the records they kept of their activities and performance of duty. There is often a wealth of information to be found in these records, including quite often, signatures of those attesting to the recordings. These records were generally kept in large ledger type books and are as extensive as the JP wanted to write. In many cases they can be much more informative than static county records. They can include not only marriages, but marriage attendants and party members, residence/intended residence, family members, etc. Now the bad part, generally these records are not kept in any one location. They may be found in county archieves, historical societies, JP descendant families and even garage sales or used book stores. Soo....if you get the chance to visit court houses and cemeteries, local genealogical and historical groups and hometown libraries...ask about JP records...and if found, you may just be able to put a little flesh on those names and dates associated with your family tree. And if it's YOUR JP, send me a sample...I do handwriting analysis on the side. [If he crosses his "ts" with a long stroke, he was probably ambitious...the longer the stoke the more so....but if the stroke goes sharply down he probably had a sarcastic streak] Connie I