In a message dated 1/28/2008 3:21:09 AM Eastern Standard Time, irish-new-york-city-request@rootsweb.com writes: > As for the link to Ancestry, no I do not have Ancestry. I would need to get > the most expensive subscription since I was born in Ireland. Most Americans > just need to get the US part which is the cheapest subscription. I have > spent years just getting to the point of trying to find the missing NY part > of the family. > > I have checked out Ancestry at times when it has been free and others have > tried to find Hugh LEONARD in the census but I never seem to find anyone > that I could actually say that was him. If I remember correctly they were > all married and how could he have been married in the US and then go back to > Belfast and marry my grandmother in the Catholic Church? > > Thank you for your reply. > Pauline > Pauline. I too was born in Ireland and lived there until adulthood but that has not diminished the value to my research that Ancestry.com (and other subscription services at times) have proved to be in researching earlier generations of relatives who moved to the US! Success in Genealogy is usually the result of making carefully considered ,logical and painstaking deductions based on many individual items of information. Huge presumptions such as yours as to what "most American researchers", " just need" don't often produce results! Census records when found are not always correct and it is unlikely that any individual could be identified as "Definitely" the man you are seeking from just a single census entry. Each possible match would need to be tracked through every available census applicable to the years he was in the US and beyond! If you have previously searched (or especially if you have asked a volunteer to search) certain records it is helpful to include that in any request to avoid the volunteer researching the same documents again and of course it goes without saying you have kept detailed records of every unsuccessful search and are not relying solely on "recollection" in successive efforts. Because someone is identified as married on a census record doesn't mean they actually were at that time or ever! Perhaps he was widowed or divorced before his return to Ireland.Even if currently and legally married in the US, he could indeed still have married in the catholic church if his first marriage was one not recognized by that church in that era! Presuming he was single while in the US on the basis of his later catholic marriage in Ireland could eliminate many real possibilities. GMcC ************** Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489