Hello, to you all!!! Wow! What a whirlwind I've been in this past week. I put out a request for suggestions on how to find a website in Australia, got several helpful replies, then posted a query on the Australian sites and, all in all, was just overwhelmed by the response. As short as I can put it, here's the story for those of you who might not have it all. As I knew it, my grgrgrandfather, John J. ALLDREDGE, left his pregnant wife and family in Posey County, Indiana, in 1849 or 1850, to join the California gold rush. He made a strike but someone knocked him in the head and stole his dust. He made his way to Australia when they struck gold down there and finally returned to Indiana the day after his faithful wife's funeral and met for the first time, the daughter with whom his wife was pregnant when he left - she was 43! He died in 1903. I got to thinking about his very long sojourn in southern climes and wondered if he could've had a family down there. That was the subject of my queries to Australia. Well, it seems that the family escutcheon has been besmirched by the "old whipper-snapper,"- several of the Aussies turned up a marriage of John James ALLDREDGE to Louise WARD in1876, in Victoria, Australia. No children were found and her death was recorded in 1894. I still have some avenues to pursue but I thought I owed you all a report on the results of your help and generosity. I'm wondering now if, just possibly, his American wife might have divorced him for being gone so long. (In the above: the "Sent to" are Aussies, the "Copy to" are Yanks. Thank you all so very much. Cookie, in Florida