I am happy to know you have discovered the usefulness of the Family History Library catalog, which is on the internet at _www.familysearch.org_ (http://www.familysearch.org) Lots of other goodies are on that website, including the 1880 census for the US and the 1881 censuses for Canada and for UK. Click away. Use FHL guides [research guides] to help you in doing research in various localities. I think there also may be a link called something like *News*. (I largely ignore the IGI and certainly the Ancestral File, the latter of which is a mish-mash. When I find that my 3rd great-grandfather, of Madison Co., KY is credited with fathering children at age 90, my blood boils!!! I know he is credited with 19 children by two wives, but he did not live to be 90!!!) Check with your LDS family history center and see what is available at that center--CD's you hope; Ancestry.com on the computer, and perhaps some microfiche, which may be of interest to you. I will explain one of the sets of microfiche, as best I can. As stated, check the microfiche drawers at at your center particularly for something called AIS = Accelerated Indexing System. There are hundreds of microfiche in this collection, and I have been told that many FHCs were given this collection when they first started up. (Since I have visited only about three *foreign* FHCs -*foreign* in that the FHC is not in my home town--I cannot say whether all FHCs have these--I am taking the word of someone on the internet) Before all the censuses appeared on the internet [many of them quite flawed--whole counties were not digitized, indexed wrong, etc] , a LOT of genealogists used these hundreds of microfiche which are at most FHCs to find WHERE and WHEN our missing ancestors (and their in-laws) might be found. As you know, not only did our ancestors move from the original 13 colonies, but also the county boundaries changed all the time!!!! So what is AIS? A better explanation can be found on the familysearch.org than I can give, but I will attempt. AIS = Accelerated Indexing Systems. It is a more or less comprehensive census index for the entire US through the 1850 censuses--and for some western areas, beyond 1850 census. (It is NOT a state by state census--but for the entire US, with some flaws, of course.) Each census year (more or less) is called a Search. Search 1 is the earliest censuses plus some early tax lists [great people-finders] to make up for the largely missing 1790 census. This index is not arranged by States or colonies, but by surname. Say, you are looking for Harrises [terrible name to research, especially when some of them used the same first names over and over again--and you wonder, whose kid is he? and where did he come from?] Say, you know where your particular Harris family was in 1850--or think you know. Check the Search for the 1850 census and check out ALL the Harrises who appear--there must be thousands of them by 1850. One of the columns will give the State and the county in which the census was taken, and that is where you want to do some exploring. If you think you know where your Harris resided in 1850, check all the other Harrises in that same state. (For example, in Kentucky, there are so many counties that your ancestor's son or brother may have been living just over the river in the next county.) How to use AIS. An example, in my own case, our extended family had an old letter written to my great-grandfather (b. 1818 KY-d 1880 TX) which was dated 1845 from a particular county in Kentucky. We did not get many leads in that county's records, except for an administration of a deceased person of the same surname, but we collected that info anyway. We collected some land records and tax records, and they seemed to fit the profile of this common-surnamed family. After some questioning, my aunt, who had a copy of the old 1845 letter, gave me the address on the envelope, and she said it was sent by packet [ship] mail. It was addressed to Vixburg [Vicksburg]. Again, the letter was dated 1845 and the letter stated where it was written in Kentucky. I went to AIS for 1850, checked all the surnames (and my ancestor's given name, of course), and discovered in 1850 my ancestor was indeed in Vicksburg area 1850 census (Warren Co. MS). Because I was working and did not have time to go to my FHC and read the film for 1850, Mississippi, I hired a researcher in Jackson, MS (he was quite reasonable in his fee). He found some land records for me--where my ancestor bought property and where he sold it--in 1852. He even sent me a map where the land was located. The census itself said my ancestor and his partner operated a tavern, and the census showed the tavern [called an ordinary in earlier times, it seems, my research of Virginia shows] was filled with boatmen, mostly from States upriver from Vicksburg. Makes sense that boatmen would be the occupants when the tavern is on a river, a tributary of the Mississippi!!! Then when I had time, I found a book of Warren Co., MS marriages on the shelves at my local FHC and discovered that my ancestor had married his first wife in Vicksburg in 1852. Back to the censuses to find her and her people, now that I had discovered her maiden name. In the 1850 census, I found her twice--once in an orphanage in Natchez, and once with her brother in a family-operated tavern (censuses taken on different dates). I gathered they were orphans because one was 16, a mechanic, and one was 14--Julia. I began to do research on her family, although she is not my ancestress. I am still discovering material about the first wife's family--how my ancestor, when his first wife died, borrowed money from a strange woman in Vicksburg--mortgaged half of his cattle. He apparently buried his bride in or around Vicksburg, even though he lived near the Gulf Coast in Texas. (It must have cost a bundle.) Back to the marriage records of Warren Co., MS--yes, the maiden name of woman from whom my ancestor borrowed money indicated she was a probable sister of the first wife. Further research of the 1860 census reveals that she herself is a widow with two daughters and is operating a boarding house in or around Vicksburg!!!! Someone transcribed/abstracted and published excerpts from a funeral home in Vicksburg, and I discovered more about the burials of not only the first wife but also her mother and a man whom I cannot identify. (more research, when I have time--could the mother of these two sisters have remarried to this stranger?) Genealogists like to solve puzzles. Genealogy, like life, is quite complicated, and I get mad when people think it is so easy to just download *stuff* from the internet!!!! Much of which is quite flawed. I hope you discover a lot of material on the internet, but do not take everything at face value. I have since learned to use the AIS to find people on the move. The difficulty is--the census is taken only every 10 years, although there are some State censuses, many of which have been filmed and are held by the Family History Library. Tax records are good census substitutes, when you can find them. Please know that a good many books held by the FHL at Salt Lake City have been filmed or microfiched. The microfiche cost 15 cents apiece [a bargain] but be aware that some of the microfiche collections run into the hundreds of microfiche--such as parts of the Pennsylvania Archives. At times, the Library will film or microfiche a book for you, but you have to request this on a special form, which I believe you can download on the FH Library website. If you don't ask, you will never know the answer. A good many vestry books and parish books of colonial Virginia have been filmed. If you see a publication listed twice on the online catalog, check both listings. One might be a catalog entry for a film of a book you want to research. Most microfiche remain at the FHL in your locality, but the film generally has to be returned. Many FHCs do not have storage space to keep film on hand for any length of time. Good luck! E.W.Wallace