Jim, There a few James Beards here: http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/ Two of the people I'm researching were shoemakers. One was Gardiner Curtis in Dublin city (born ca.1818), the other was Thomas Kelly in Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), who was said to woo his future wife, who was cloistered in a convent in Kingstown, when he delivered shoes to the convent, shoes his father and perhaps he made. Here are two interesting pages on shoemakers. http://geomacc.com/history/cordwainer.shtml http://geomacc.com/history/guilds.shtml PJ, in Texas