Hello, I'm new to this list and I'm hoping I can find someone who might be able to shed some light on this particular dead end in my family research. I live in the U.S. I'm researching an ancestor named James Beard who immigrated to the U.S., probably to New York City, sometime before 1808, when he got married in New York. (He may have come through Nova Scotia, though, because his wife was from there.) I don't know his birth year, but another researcher in my family guessed that he would probably have been around 30 years old when he got married, so she estimated his birth year as around 1778. Could be later, of course. Family lore says he came from Dublin, from the Bard estate in Belmont. That Bard name raises another issue. We have always thought his name was James Bard, and the other family researcher tried to make a stretch and have him descended from Sir Henry Bard, Viscount Bellomont. Belmont and Bellomont are an intriguing coincidence. But I'm pretty convinced now that he was James Beard when he came here and he changed his last name to Bard around 1825. I have found him in most city directories for New York and Philadelphia (he lived there for a while) off and on from 1809 to 1828, by which time he had moved out of New York City. The clincher for me was that he was listed in the New York City directory for 1824 as James Beard at a certain address, and the next year, 1825, he's James Bard at the same address. In all city directories before then he was James Beard. In all directories after then he was James Bard. He was a shoemaker by trade. Some family records indicate that he died in 1827 of typhoid fever in either New York or Philadelphia, but I haven't been able to verity that yet either. I haven't been able to find any death information for him. Thanks in advance to anyone who might be able to lead me to some information about James Beard. Thanks. Jim Blanchard mandobiz@gmail.com