Justin, Bruce and others, I am headed to the NYS Library. Taking the later bus as I had computer problems and could not shut my computer off until I did a lot of copying. This was suppose to make things easier but my life is on a leash to this thing. Dottie told me about the Banta book and I know that there is a Van Vranken book. Anything that had to do with early families of Albany County area are there. Remember that before we were Saratoga County, we were Albany Co. so we fall into their early records. This is why it is important to do a couple of things on any list you are on. Put your surname(s) in the Subject. Many people delete a lot because they assume or do not have the time to look thru the pile of messages they receive. Help them find you and make connections. If you are sending a message to a list of a particular area, a simple thing like putting the basic info in will help others to look right down the information and most can "spot" the surnames they have and get involved. At least they will check against their info. Recalling what I put in the original Roll Call message will give enough information to get the ball rolling. Allied families are very important, search and save all of them for one-to-two generations out for sure. Remember, their ancestors are your ancestors too. If you cannot find any information about your direct lineal ancestor to get you back further generations, it may be in the baptism, birth, death or marriage records of another family member, just not yours. Knowing what they are up to and where they were doing it may just be where yours disappeared to. We are seeing a lot of that to be true with the Go West answers. Your Saratoga (and earlier) information may not be anywhere in a repository or records in Saratoga County or even in NYS but everything might be in a library or museum in another state. Old diaries, family letters, Bibles, county histories, newspaper articles which mention these other people could hold one tid-bit of information about our family. I do a lot of estate searches searching for the heirs to unclaimed estates. In doing so, I have to put as much information together from vital records; obits, marriages and births found in the newspapers; old telephone books, city directories, business directories, census and any other source I can think of to find anyone related. Any lead gives us another path to go down and that is how you will find your families. Make it simple with enough info for anyone to pick up on and the details can be supplied later. Example Robert Crawford b 1770 Poundridge, Westchester, NY d 1839 Milford, Oakland, MI m 1798 Saratoga Springs, Saratoga, NY to Hannah Albright Their children: Levi Crawford b 1800 Saratoga Springs, NY Jacob Albright Crawford b 1801 Saratoga Springs, NY Elethear Crawford b 1803 Saratoga Springs, NY Asahel Crawford b 1805 Sararoga Springs, NY Ezra Crawford b 1808 Saratoga Springs, NY Robert Smith Crawford b 1809 Oppenheim, NY Alanson Crawford b 1812 Oppenheim, NY William Dunning Crawfordb 1814 Oppenheim, NY Rhoda Crawford b 1816 Oppenheim, NY More available on their ancestors, siblings, decendents Allied families - Waring, Waterbury, Armstrong, Dunning, Ashton, Wood, Van Dorn, and further Saratoga, Westchester, MI and Canadian (Loyalist) Connections. I just signed on to the FREE Juno Web. This allows attachments and I haven't the foggiest of how that works. With my history of computer problems with email and any other part of computers, I will wait on trying that selection. God Bless Ruth Ann [email protected] ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.