I think there is a happy medium in the research that is done. Sometimes one can spend a lot of time over an extended period of time looking at a wide variety of records for the historic place & time period, and not come up with maiden names for wives, and sometimes even the name at all. Personally, I hate doing Jane or Margaret, or even Mrs. John _____, but I also have seen some early records that seem to indicate that the dad had the baby all by himself because there is no mother listed in the birth record, and the parish record doesn't list their marriage (or in the case of some of the Scandinavian countries, there's four or five men with the same name marrying in the parish in the same time period--so your guess is as good as mine as to which one is the right couple, since none of the birth/christening records you can find list the wife's name). We need to teach our people to be thorough and to be accurate, but there does also come a time that we need to move forward and do what we need to do with what we've been able to find, even though the information is less than perfectly complete. That said, I know that sometimes, if we're willing to use prayer, confirmation of what we suspect in a family can have the verification come. One of my Tennessee families I was able to find in the 1900 census, so I had the Mom's given name. I didn't have her maiden name. The existing county marriage records started in the late Civil War years (probably because they fought up and down the valley and I suspect the courthouse probably got in the way at some point) and this couple would have been married in the late 1850s given what the census said about how long they'd been married. No record in surrounding counties of the marriage. I was allowed to have a special experience with the Spirit testifying as to what her maiden name was, BUT I also replied that while I believed what I was told, I understood that non-members might not accept that as proof--could I get some tangible evidence to collaborate that piece of information please? A week later, I got a packet from Oklahoma in the mail--from the groom's brother's descendants that did indeed confirm what the Spirit had indicated. (The woman in question turned out to be the sister of my own 2nd great grandfather's third wife and married his brother.) So make sure that our people are doing their research with prayer. Was it Brother Brigham that said that if necessary the Lord would send angels to the Temples with the records we needed to complete this work? If that's true, there's more that most of us can do to identify people with what's currently available or becoming available, because MOST of us aren't being handed records of our ancestors when we get to the Temple. So keep researching, and get the ward members researching. Karen PS, that's why it's called research: you search, and then you research. In a message dated 6/11/2009 12:06:00 A.M. Central Daylight Time, sapresley12@gmail.com writes: I have just signed up to this list again after several years of not having it after a computer crash - the fact that this list is still here testifies that the work is going forth and nothing will stop it. To add my 2 cents about partial names, no names, addresses, etc., I go back to my basic training which says in essence that if I was looking through the IGI for ancestors to see if their work had been done, there would be no way I could tell with Mrs. Blank born in USA. The information is so skimpy all too often, that one unintentionally duplicates the effort. I realize that the people we are doing the work for know if their work has been done once, twice or 152 times and as long as they have the work done, that's good. But, we are supposed to be helping patrons to do good research, find sources and document them and take a little longer to find more out about them. We often have sisters come in with hair flying every which way, a dazed, panicked look on their faces because one or two of their teens just now told them they needed names to take to the temple tomorrow morning - early! Now, you and I know that this sister means well, but she doesn't have the time necessary at that moment to do any research, so just so the kids have something to take to the temple to do baptisms for, this kind of skimpy information happens. There is also the Family Reunion coming up and everyone is to take one name of an ancestor to the temple on this reunion week. Not everyone does research, those that know a little are usually the ones that have to come up with the names and in a hurry because everyone forgot to get the names til the last minute. My personal favorite is when a relative does all of the researching and sends the info to another relative so their ward can help them do the temple work. Problem with this is that as a Consultant it is very dicey going if one trys to explain that the research is not satisfactory and the names do not appear to be correct. One card that caused some concern at the temple was a pink card, person listed was boy/surname, born abt 1900, in USA and parents weren't known. Family History is called Family History & not genealogy anymore, I thought, because we are making an effort to find out more about the ancestors that have gone on before us. It's the dash between the birth and death dates that hold all the answers and without some of those answers we aren't richer for the experience of finding out that cancer runs in that side of the family or that I'm an avid gardener because not only was my grandmother, but generations of that line were avid gardeners. In an episode of Ancestors while interviewing the prisoners at the Utah Prison about their work in extracting the Freedman Bank Records, one man found out that he wasn't the only one in his family who was a criminal - he found there were criminals in a couple of generations of ancestors as well. Somehow, that knowledge made him feel better. He found out about some of their dashes. So, the dilemma is this; do we let things slide with as little as possible just so the work gets done, or should we try to encourage and teach research methods so another relative would know the work had been done already and didn't duplicate. I know my answer, but that's just me and the way I think, it doesn't mean that it's the right way. Thank you for letting me voice another opinion on this topic. S Morgan Please send the one word message SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT-L-REQUEST@ROOTSWEB.COM ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message **************Dell Deals: Don’t miss huge summer savings on popular laptops starting at $449. (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221770187x1201425153/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fclk%3B215566131%3B37864407%3B i)