These two posts are from SHAMROCK, FYI. Jana << In a message dated 98-08-27 12:59:53 EDT, medwards@castles.com writes: << I saw a suggestion from Ellen about writing to editors of local weekly newspapers in Ireland. I am curious as to how that worked out. Did the editors publish your inquiries? >> Mary Anne, >> I am one of the success stories as a result of sending a letter to a newspaper in Ireland. I used the Westmeath Examiner, which by the way is on-line. The fact that my Grandparents came from Westmeath was one of the few things I was pretty sure of. Make sure that you include birth year if you know it, whether they were married in Ireland, wife's maiden name, and most importantly, the names of their children. Those children were probably named after Grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. I spoke to my cousin in Westmeath two weeks ago (we speak once each month) and she said there were 19 letters in the newspaper from people looking for family. The Westmeath Examiner ran an article about my search for family in Westmeath, and my finding family because of my letter in the newspaper. It was very thrilling. Mary told me that there was one letter printed about a family she knew. She called the family to make sure they saw the letter. It does work. I do remember seeing a web site that listed all the newspapers from Ireland that were on-line, I'll try to find it again. Maybe someone out there already bookmarked it. But I don't know if they all publish letters of people looking for family. I just know that mine worked. Go for it, and good luck Kathleen Mary Anne, Eight years ago, my father wrote to the editor of a newspaper in County Cavan. However, my dad has his own weekly newspaper column here in the States, and had a suspicion that a general inquiry would be ignored. He therefore had the inquiry run as an advertisement! He received three answers from relatives on both his grandfather's and his grandmother's sides of the family. He was thrilled, and when he made a trip to Ireland later that year, he made a big point of seeing the relatives and taking pictures, etc. I believe he checked first as to how much such an ad would cost, but figured it was worth the cost when he got the responses -- a genealogist would have cost him a lot more! Besides, this way he had personal contact with a couple of fourth cousins, and a third-cousin-once-removed. I have also heard of people putting such an inquiry into the "Personals" column of newspapers -- although that seems to be exclusively used for matchmaking these days (at least here in my area.) You might ask them to run it as a Letter to the Editor, as well. Good luck! Lynn Reilly Marshall