Lanita, As a matter of fact, I've researched for many years, looking only for my direct line. I now realize that without adding at least the siblings' names, dates and location of births and deaths I've missed valuable clues that would have helped shorten my searches! Just this last month I found a new cousin who had many interesting stories to tell about his own ancestors, one of which was also my ggggrandfather. I couldn't resist reading the whole 44 pages he sent. Lo and behold, there was also my gggrandfather, who has been missing all these years. He was not in the direct line of my new cousin, but was a collateral. Without the work my new cousin put into listing all the marriages, descendants, etc of his ancestors, I wouldn't have the long-searched-for gggrandfather, his wife and their story!! Since I found this, I've gone back to my paper files and begun to add those extra family members to my family tree and found many leads to follow. If I had done this from the first, I'd be a lot further along in my search for my direct line. Donnie <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.