Kathy wrote..... >>My problem is that some of the so-called experts at the State Historical Society are extremely RUDE to us newcomers! I would love to continue with it and perhaps even become certified someday but with those folks' behavior, it's discouraging!<< DON'T worry about it, Kathy, and whatever you do don't let it put you off! Sometimes we have exactly the same problem in England with record office archivists who can be very autocratic. I find that many offices are pleasant and helpful (although I am obviously not a newcomer, since I have been involved in family history for 25 years), but there are others who can be quite obnoxious. The problem is with some of them that they are very academically inclined and do not regard family historians as being serious historians. They have a mental picture of researchers as being all grey-bearded professors and academics, and if you haven't got a university degree they don't want to know you. I have also come across archivists who exercise a proprietorial control over their records and seem to regard them as being their own personal property! The answer is to persist, politely but firmly, in your right as a citizen to see records which are, after all, supposed to be in the public domain and available to all. Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)