----- Original Message ----- From: marie To: Paul Drake Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2006 5:18 AM Subject: Immigrants Immigrant ancestors are a royal pain to trace (for a lot of reasons), add to that the relatives who assume truth because something is posted on the net. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi, Marie. You have well stated a straight-forward summary of some common problems. Your choice of words should be observed by all researchers who have problems of ancestors who immigrated, especially during the last 3 centuries. I like to think of foreign research as you also apparently do, but too many researchers do not. Research is virtually the same in all countries; difficulty is that other places call the same records by other, and to us very different, names. Since the beginning of private ownership in some nations, and the activities of governments demanding taxes, we - or the churches - have seen to the care of records having to do with land, and measurements of it, taxes, some deaths, some births, roads, military service, and many, many records of courts' activities and of governments. Then too, all nations have had records destroyed by weather, enemies, fire, and carelessness. The careful researcher must learn the names of those records by which those other places call those categories. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 6079 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Try SPAMfighter for free now!