Jim Corse - I thank you for your references to HALCROs and HALCROWs in the Orkney phone book !!! I can actually bring up several of them on the internet via ' People Finder '. Not sure I will call them, but I do have the inclination to just write them a note with Christmas wishes from Oklahoma, as we are surely related somehow - if not in the last 200 years, then WAY farther back <G>. I understand the HALCROW name came from a Norse Kingdom that was split between 2 sons - thus the name of HAL(f) CROW(n). The surname then drifted down to the Shetlands then the Mainland. The phone book entries would tend to support this theory, as Shetland listed almost ten times the amount of HALCROW entries as did Kirkwall. Does anyone with Norse background (or better in History than I was) in the Orkneys know of this story ? - Meg Greenwood / Oklahoma, USA