Dear Listmembers, I've been in the background for a month or more and would like to encourage other readers to post their step-by-step research attempts;successes and failures to this list. Here is an example: I have always wanted to "find" my father's great-grandfather, our long heralded Union Army ancestor. While posting queries on the NYC-ROOTS-L list, I was gently reminded to do my basic research e.g. get a birth certificate or other vital record to verify this ancestor's identify before proceeding with further research. Low and behold, that suggestion got results - the elusive ancestor turned out to be a "Joseph" Curtin rather than a "John" Curtin. Since I ran into too many "brick walls" searching for our direct ancestor - I searched the NYC death records index for NYC all of his children's death certificates which verified his name. I thought I "knew" my ancestor's real name, my father proudly spoke of John aka Joe all of his years....just to show you how fallible family stories can be. --Helen Magida Baltimore, Maryland