Hi folks, here's some quick responses, Janet.... >I have an ancestor from Scotland who married a Mary DICKSON born in Ireland; >they were married in Templemore, Londonderry, in 1866. I am wondering if >this area is a 'resort' area where couples went to get married or if it is >possible/probable that Mary would have been born here. Any thoughts about >how I could pursue finding her place of birth? Templemore parish is downtown London/Derry. Perhaps they got married in the Cathedral! There's also other chapels. It's extremely important to know what the religion most likely is. Derry's a great place but a resort?? There was always lots of traffic between it and Scotland. People would plant their potatoes and head over to work in Scotland for the season, then return. Lots of commerce as well. It was also industrialized -- largely the linen trade. The first thing I'd check is Civil Registration to see if the marriage is registered. Or it is and that's how come you know when and where they got married?! Okay, then I'd give her spin through IGI, recalling the Irish coverage is very bad. This is on line and free. Then I'd look for church records. To do this you had best know the denomination. Don't? No problem, then contact the Derry genealogy centers and pay them to ru n her through their indexes. Otherwise you will have to obtain the ones you can get and go through them yourself. LDS has some of them. Ryan "Irish Records" identifies what is available and their location at the time he published the book (so only use the revised edition published in 1997, I beleive). You are going to have to have a clue about her parents' names since there is likely to many many Mary Dicksons. Check their children's names. If you know where they were living in Scotland, use the Scottish records (censuses and OPR's) to either locate them or prove they were not in Scotland. Robert > Helen MURRAY > Place of Birth: Belfast > Born: 1885 - 1890? > Died: Dec 1965 in America (Maryland) > Married: William Rogerson STEPHENSON > >I am trying to located birth >information on Helen and also marriage information. The British are more civilized than Americans (I can say this, I am American). They began civil registration MUCH earlier than us Americans. In Engerland they began registering marriages, births, deaths July 1, 1837. Scotland 1855 and Ireland 1866 for all, earlier for Protestants (I may be off a year or two on these but you get the idea). If you go to your local LDS Family History center, you can order the indexes, if they are not there waiting for you. Many centers have the indexes permanently. Then you order a film with the actual record. Some years were not filmed --- you must order it. Best place to learn more about how to use LDS to do this research is the British Isles Family History Society in America: GREAT on line guide.http://www.rootsweb.com/~bifhsusa/ Also never, ever forget to check www.genuki.org.uk -- a lot. Andrew, >I am wondering if there exists a site which would contain the names of >emigrants from Northern Ireland heading to America - possibly New York >c. 1770s. Perhaps these would exist in the form of ship's passenger >registers. I am looking for any emigrants of the surname AUSTIN >(possibly out of Armagh). Alas, no. No requirement existed to identify people moving to the Americas, any more than people are listed when they moved from Ohio to Indiana. Same reason: Same country. SO we do have lists of non British aliens who entered the colonies. All the pseudo lists we have found are published. You can occasionally find them on the Internet. This will represent an small percentage of what really exists. To locate them ALL, use Filby. It is at a local library. A long row of brownish book. He indexes all the PUBLISHED immigrants. Every year he publishes an update. You start with the first and look for the ancestor in every volume. If you find him, you note the source, then seek that source. That leaves unpublished ship lists, but in your period, these do not exist. In the majority of cases for your period, you will never find a ship list. Don't waste a lot of time doing this. Instead, you probably should be figuring out where he came from. That could talk a lot of time and at the end...you'll know something more useful. A place to go visit. The book on Ulster emigration to the US is Dickson "Ulster Emigration to Colonial America". You will also find the free courses at www.familytreemaker.com (on line university) on immigration very useful. You can go to Belfast and search records there: newspapers announcing the ship's safe arrival and listing emigrants (indexed at the Linen Hall Library), the computer-based emigrants database at the Ulster American Folk Museum. Etc, etc. AUSTIN is not wildly common in Ulster. It is not among the top 500 names so it is not in Bell "Surnames of Ulster". There are, according to Brian Mitchell in "Surnames of Derry" 10 familes of this name in Derry in 1989. There were Austins all over Ireland -- Dublin, Westmeath, Cork.... Mitchell says the surname has been in Ireland since the 14th century. Best of luck, Linda Merle