> Thanks for the note that Ancestry.com is offering a month of free use, but that is > only if you give your address and are willing to allow your choice of surname to > sponsor a family web site. > The only problem I find in using Ancestry is their search engine is not very > knowledgable. The search engine consists entirely of the window (type in) > --------surname. If you do find some book you want to search, and you do type in your > surname, you can easily download 150 separate entries, including all cities and > counties that also share the same surname, i. e. for example MONROE Co. West > Virginia, or JOHNSON Co. Missouri. God forbid your name should be SMITH and you > should download 1500 separate entries, you have no idea if any of them are what you > are looking for or if any of them refer to a city or county name, and there is no way > of knowing unless you check each one. The search engine needs to be vastly improved, > until then Ancestry.com can still be useful if you are willing to spend a lot of time > downloading and searching. I actually have found some things there, but then I mainly > have been searching uncommon names. Thanks, Jim Windsor > >