Our list has been very quiet of late. In the hopes of generating interest, I encourage our listmembers to post their success stories on their genealogy research. I will start off by giving you mine. My mother's family name is Martin, based in Chester County, PA. I initially started this because I was at a standstill with my father's family, Storms of NJ. In the beginning I thought, oh, my, what a common name, how far can I possibly get? My first roadblock was my mother's parents. I could not find them anywhere. Simon and Mamie Martin. One day I went through an old box of stuff at my mom's and discovered an obit. Lo and behold, Simon and Mamie were really William and Emma. Those certainly were the days of nicknames! From there I managed to track back 4 more generations until, once again, I was at a standstill. Nevertheless, I posted the family tree I had to date on Ancestry and Rootsweb. About 6 months later I got an email from a "cousin," who contacted me after seeing my family tree, and so nicely supplied the missing next generation. From that, I was able to hook up with the Martin genealogy in Futhey and Cope's "History of Chester County" and thus had my family back to their immigration in 1685, Thomas and Margery Martin! So once again I began to search on Storms of NJ. I did not even know my grandfather! Searching family clues, I thought I could estimate a year of death, and so requested a death record from NJ, to no avail. Then I tried PA, due to its proximity, and thus, after 2 tries, found a death record for my grandfather. Census info got me back to about 1870, but then I was stuck again. The posting of my family tree to date, plus posts on some Storms surname lists, finally netted me contact with a fellow with whom I had a common ancestor, my great-great grandfather, Adam Storms. Apparently Adam married 4 times, and I come from that 4th marriage. The fellow I met online came from Adam's 2nd marriage. Did I get any further back than Adam? No, NJ records are scanty before 1800. But he did give me a wealth of information on Adam, including copies of Civil War records. So, on one family line I got back to 1685 and the other to about 1830. Not too bad for 8 years of work! Before the internet, this amount of information would have taken one or two lifetimes to acquire. Moral? No matter how scanty, post your family tree at Rootsweb and Ancestry. There are many, many "cousins" out there who are also searching and can help you with tidbits of information! Now let me hear your success story! Gail List Admin