I hope I don't FLAMED or get kicked off any the mailing list for writing this, but I really think you all are going to understand what I'm feeling right now. And for anyone new to researching using the internet, please heed the words I'm about to say. After taking a hiatus from researching for a few months, I decided it was time to dive back into my passion of "finding dead people" as my grandson says. I visited one of the most popular web sites that we all use to do general searches on. Just for grins, I put in my gggg grandfather's name to see what would come up. (A year ago, nothing that pertained to him ever came up.) Well, when I did my search, there were 3 family files that popped up. Normally I would be ecstatic about that. But there were things that disturbed me greatly. One being that they have the parents of my gggg grandfather and as best as I have been able to tell, they are completely wrong. I contacted one of these people about a year or two ago to ask them what sources, proof or documentation they had to support stating his parents names. At the time, they "couldn't recall where they got the information." But... they choose to have it published on the WWW, and still has it there... with no proof, source or documentation as far as I know. This evening, I emailed the three that have the files on the web. So far, two of the emails have bounced. They all three also have the wife of my gggg grandfather listed, including her maiden name. Once again, I'm asking where they found the proof that her maiden name is as such. I have a website and I have posted that my findings of her maiden name are "purely supposition", entering her name as we'll say... "Mary Jane UNKNOWN." It's MY supposition what her parentage may be and nothing more. I have no proof. They either have the proof, came to a similar conclusion as I did (with no proof but chose to state it as fact) or there is always the possibility that they have taken my words and turned them into fact. (Yes, I made a pretty good argument that it could be true!) I HOPE I'm wrong. I HOPE they have the sources, proof and documentation to back up what they've chosen to publish to the world. I owe them not only a HUGE apology for this post, but a even bigger THANK YOU for finding something I've spent hundreds of hours and money trying to find. If that's true, I'm more than happy to eat a crow! For you that are just now starting out on your journey into the past, I ask you to please never put a file, family tree, database or create a webs site on the internet if you don't have the documentation to back it up. It takes more than sitting at your computer to do this thing we call genealogy. It takes going to libraries, courthouses, cemeteries, historical societies and many other places that require actual "leg work" to get the job done and done well. You'll be proud and very glad that you did it, and with the help from good people like the ones you'll find on the mailing list, you'll be successful! One of the greatest things about doing research is working together, comparing notes and keeping each other focused on our endeavor to find the truth of who we are and where we came from. Never rely on someone else's work until you have researched and proved it to yourself it's correct. Just because it's on the web doesn't make it true. Joyce