Right.,...if one can't find hide nor hair of ancestors in an area, it's always a good idea to consider the land grant possibility (we're not talking about a 'lost' grandfather in 1920, but time applicable ancestors)...clues might well be found to where original settlers came from . Along with land grant folks the same goes for many other things, too......religions, for instance....if an area was settled largely by, say, Quakers from PA, then that might be a good starting place. Along these lines, I had an ancestor "appear'' in Belmont County Ohio, in 1803.....research indicated that a lot of Quakers had come to the area from the Winchester, VA area...the Hopewell Meeting. So, I looked there, and found them all...in that Hopewell Meeting, with parents, grandparents and certificates where they had moved to VA, originally from Chester County. I'd never have found them if I hadn't learned about the importance of the Quaker faith in their area, and followed up on it as a possibility. All this only enforced the importance of doing RESEARCH on the area of interest. It isn't enough to simply ask others for lookups, etc - it is essential for US to know the history of the area, and of many different aspects....... the religious background...... where many settlers came from and the emigration patterns to elsewhere FROM the area.... and now, we can add land grant info to the mix. There are others, for sure...these are just a few exampled......the general idea is, in other words, to learn all you can about any geographic area where your folks lived.........you just never know where you'll find the tid bit that leads to where you want to 'go'....... and, it's the ONLY way ... I sometimes think it isn't particularly helpful for us to spoon feed tons of information to people..... particularly when it is evident that the person is new to the hobby, or inexperienced in the how tos of research. Far better to give leads and suggestions that will encourage them to actually THINK about their family, the area...and, come up with theories to follow up on. I've run into so many people who think research consists of asking some stranger to give them information, and it seems a fairly safe assumption that asking others to feed them data IS their idea of research.....! Sandra "This was interesting stuff Sandy and good information to hang on to. I was only familiar with the grants in Western Illinois in Mercer County and none of those land grants were actually lived on by the recipient - the "popular idea" is that they hung the grant documents on their walls as souvenirs of their service and then went wherever they pleased but not to Western Illinois! The records are interesting though as they do in many cases show the home state ." -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.7.0/345 - Release Date: 5/22/2006