My friends - Before this weekend is gone, I want to drop by to give you the solution to the latest Skills Puzzler concerning church records. We had a good number of people who tried this one - 29 at this point - and just about everyone had at least the starting point for the solution. As you will recall, the scenario was one in which a researcher had been trying to find records on her family in an area in LA in which she had found some baptismal records for this family. The church parish was head quartered in Natchitoches Parish in LA. The word "Parish" in this latter case, however, is synonymous with "County", as it is a civil distinction and has nothing to do with the church parish. One of the key clues that escaped the researcher was the fact that the Red River running through Natchitoches Parish was an ideal "highway" on which to travel. As a result, the priest from the church parish was regularly travelling down the Red River to other civil parishes which were still in the jurisdiction of his own church parish area, which was much larger than the area covered by the civil parish, or "county" of Natchitoches. The priest used his pre-printed forms and paid scant attention to the fact that he was baptizing children in other civil parishes in LA - because he was still within the confines of the area of his church parish. Our researcher had, in fact, had the foresight to check Winn, Grant, Red River, Vernon, Sabine, Bienville, Rapides and even DeSoto parishes, which adjoin Natchitoches Parish, but found nothing. However, following the Red River watercourse, her family was found in Avoyelles Parish, which does not adjoin Natchitoches Parish, but the Red River flows through it and the northern tip of it was still within the priest's church parish boundaries. This problem was made more difficult by the fact that the word "Parish" is used in LA in two different contexts, but it still is an interesting pointer to help us recognize the fact that we need to always be aware of the differences in geographic scope of the land areas covered by church jurisdictions as opposed to those arbitrary lines which mark off the boundaries of civil jurisdictions, such as counties. -B ============================================================