My friends - It appears that a good many of you did not receive my post yesterday, which contained the latest Skills Puzzler. I have found out today that there was an Interenet hub problem yesterday, and I suspect that it was responsible for the mail not reaching everyone as it should. Even today, I received another bounce message with 44 of our List subscribers who use apex.net on it. In that case, since it has been happening all week, I am not sure if it is a hub problem or a problem within the apex.net organization. In any event, I am going to resend the Skills Puzzler. If you received the first one, then now is the time to hit your delete button. If you did not receive it, it is shown below. -B ============================================================ Skills Puzzler # 25 - Church Records > >Over the years, we will work with church records in one form or another. As >a result, it is wise that we be aware of some of the unique characteristics >of such records and of some of the tangents associated with them. > >Among church records as a whole, those of the Catholic Church can contain >gold mines of data, including such things as baptismal records with names >of both sets of grandparents, including the maiden names of each >grandmother. Our Puzzler is based upon a problem connected with such >records. This particular problem occurred in Louisiana, but it could happen >anywhere that there is a large Catholic presence. > >A genealogist was researching her early Louisiana forebears, who were >Catholics. She was fortunate in that she did have some family records, from >Bibles and other documents that had been passed down in the family. She was >also fortunate enough to find some baptismal records in the early 19th >century for her family. The parish priest of Natchitoches Parish(the word >"Parish" in the latter case is a civil term, equivalent to "County", while >the former use of it is a religious term)left some excellent records, which >clearly indicate that the priest baptized several children, over several >years, that were a part of the researcher's family. The priest even had >something unusual for that day - pre-printed forms on which he could fill >in the blanks. The forms read like this "I, Father John Baptiste of the 2nd >parish in Natchitoches, Louisiana, did on the ------- >------of the year of our Lord -------- immerse and baptize------------, >child of------------ >------------and grandchild of ------------------------------------." > >Our problem occurs when the researcher began to look for other records in >Natchitoches Parish for this family. Absolutely nothing was found - not a >single record of any sort for any person bearing the surname for which the >researcher was searching. This Parish is in the west central part of LA, >and is fairly large, with a lake contained within it and the Red River >flows through it. The records are in good condition and are relatively easy >to search. > >Contained somewhere in the narrative above is a clue regarding why our >researcher did not find any records on her family, even though they did >exist, in good number. Our task is to determine what the clue is and where >to look for those records. ============================================================