I have just returned from a Heritage Quest Road Show. If one comes in your area, please do take the opportunity to go. Leland Meitzler was our lecturer and he had three different sessions... One session was called LOCATING YOUR ANCESTOR'S FAMILY WHEN ALL YOU KNOW IS THE STATE. This lecture dealt with all the state wide indices that are available and mentioned a lot of the ones we have discussed on Pridgen list. Ex...PERSI. As you know we have in our archives ALL the articles that are Pridgen based thanks to our own Jane who so graciously fetched them from the Allen County Library. Other indices were of course, Census, IGI (use with caution), The internet, and almost every state has some sort of index of names. Perhaps later this week I can go into more detail about this lecture. The second lecture of the day was of particular importance to those of us from the South...YOUR ANCESTOR DIDN'T DIE IN THE COURTHOUSE FIRE. This talk told where we should go to look for information if the courthouse did burn... County histories Date of fire....maybe it burned before your ancestor was there even. Did the WPA do any inventories. Were the Deeds reconstructed? Check for county boundary changes. Maybe the necessary you need is in a parent county--or a child county. Church Records City directories Coroner's records Newspapers Tax records Voter Registration records Cemetery Records and tombstones Funeral home records School records Go to Archives and check if there were any copies of county records sent there State Bounty Land Records...available for Ga., Maryland, Mass, NY, NC, Pennsylvania, SC, and Virginia...and here I learned something new....A person could give his bounty land to a relative...a son or daughter or grandchild...when that person claims the land, he has to prove his bloodline to the Veteran....Maybe here is where we need to spend more time. State Prison records State Hospital records Federal Records Pension, Census, Federal Bounty Land Records ...Revolutionary War through the Mexican War The third lecture was on the value of Newspaper Research. I will go into this tomorrow because this is an important tool also. Carol P. Martoccia 903 East Fifth Street Greenville, NC 27858 Pridgen Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/6297 Pridgen Archives: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl