George or Shiela Irwin <[email protected]> wrote: > Question: In the case of a very uncommon name like Shaffenacker, would the > Social Security index let you search on only the last name? How about using > the asterisk? Yes - at least the SSDI at RootsWeb will. It shows that there are 4,216 persons with the surname PENCE in the index as of March. Before the SSDI was made available at several sites on line, there used to be a company that would sell you a database of a given surname. In 1989 it cast me about $20 to get all of the PENCEs in the list. Some folks may like the search capabilities at other sites, but I generally get better searches with the options available at RootsWeb. Richard