My friends - I am deviating a little from our usual "schedule" of postings each week. I usually save the non-data type posts for Fridays, as a way to close out the week. However, since this is Thanksgiving week, I am going to post another in the Skills Puzzler series today. There will be no data post tomorrow or on Thanksgiving, although I will be responding to any requests that come through. At some point over the next few days, I will drop by with the solution to this Puzzler. We have discussed, to a small degree, records that are available in long standing churches. We do not have as many of these sorts of records in the Jackson Purchase region as we would like, but it is good to be familiar with them, since we may have opportunities to dig into them in some other part of the country as we work our way backward in our research. The facts for the current Puzzler came to my attention through some assistance I gave to a researcher about 15 years ago. She had ancestors who came from New England to the JP region in the 1850's. She did quite well in the JP research, but had run into an odd problem that was frustrating her as she worked with the family in the state of Massachusetts, where they had lived prior to coming to the JP. She had an old family Bible in her possession which indicated that her ancestor, Michael Colquatt, had died on 14 January 1831 in MA. A grave marker existed for him, but only the name was still legible by the 1980's. In researching the church records in the area, she came upon a burial record for her Michael Colquatt, but the date given was 2 May 1831. Her reaction, which we would probably agree with at that moment, is that the church records must be in error, since the family Bible material was entered contemporaneously with the events, as they happened. She gave no more thought to the church record. However, about two years later, and quite by accident, as she was reviewing some old newspapers on microfilm, on another line, she came across a one line "filler" piece in a newspaper dated 9 May 1831, which read: " Buried last week, Michael Colquatt, cordwainer, beloved by all". This newspaper snippet threw our researcher into a quandary. Now, there were *two* references to Colquatt having been buried during the first week in May. The question before her then, and before us now, is this: Should we consider the family Bible record now to be suspect, since two other resources are talking about May, instead of January? If so, how could it be off by that many months? The Bible was bought by Michael Colquatt himself in June of 1821, and the entries were obviously made at different times, with different quills and different inks, recording births, marriages and deaths as they occurred, and all other records which had been checked had been shown to be accurate. All we have to work with are these three documents. How should we proceed? If you want to opine on this one, you can send your thoughts to the List or to me directly. As I said earlier, I'll be back in a day or two with the solution. At this point, I want to extend my best wishes to all of you, in the hope that your Thanksgiving will be pleasant, restful and given over to those thoughts which are the basis for the celebration itself. -B ============================================================