Sue--I go to my small local LDS family history center near Columbus, Ohio, and have a Butler County story that is almost unbelievable. I had been searching unsuccessfully for months for gggrandparents, whom I thought had lived in Butler County. Every internet search led to a dead end for some reason. Finally I tried my local LDS center, which is manned by overworked but helpful volunteers. One specializes in finding Irish ancestors, another is very knowledgeable on how to find things through LDS, and the third basically offers encouragement and asks the other two. Some days in there, it is very crowded and hard to get help, but they do the best they can and are very patient with impatient people. Other days, there is no one else there, and I can have the benefit of their undivided attention. One of those days, I mentioned my frustration. One of them suggested I order the soundex for 1880, which would have listed my ggrandmother as a child, and would help me pinpoint the family's location. Bingo! There they were, in Butler County, just as I had thought! At the same time, the encouraging volunteer lady remembered that another woman at the center had been searching the same county, and she thought she was searching that same name. Okay fine, I thought. The chances of that--two people in a small center near Columbus looking for the same ancestors in Butler County, PA.--have to be slim to none. But I thanked her for the tip. The next time I went to the center, I noticed that the lady signing in ahead of me was the same person the encouraging volunteer had told me about. I asked her if she was looking for Butler County, PA (I knew she was because I had seen the microfilms she had ordered, since we share). She said yes, she was. Then I asked her if she, by any chance, was searching the Adams family. She, startled, said yes. Then I asked her if she was searching for ROBERT Adams, and she WAS! As it turns out, she and her 87-year-old mother, in Slippery Rock, had been searching that family since 1945, and in a flash I went from clueless to having access to property and tax records, census records, plat maps, etc., dating back to my gggggggrandfather in 1750! Not only that, they are going to give me copies of their corrrespondence over the years with my line's many cousins! In return, I gave them copies of old family photos and information on my ggrandmother, plus a promise to help them dig. So you never know what you will find, just around the corner. I have found many cousins from my other lines on the internet, including a lady in CA whose mother had taught my mother in a one-room schoolhouse in Jakes Prairie, Missouri, in 1926! Another word about LDS centers. At my local center recently was an elderly lady who had traveled alone from about 1,000 miles away to research her ancestors, whom she thought had come from Ohio. She said she was dying of cancer, and wanted to get her project done before she died. (She was a Mormon herself, making it doubly important to her.) The ladies there were horrified that she had come all that way, since she could have gotten the exact same information back at her own LDS center. She hadn't known that she could order everything she needed, back in her home town. She hadn't had to travel all that way. The point is, ask questions, and keep asking, since that is how we learn. So good luck to you, and success in finding your roots. I have only been doing this for about 8 or 10 months now, and I already have most of my lines traced to 1800, and a few back to 1740. I have 1,100 ancestors and relatives in my database. In the process, I have met hundreds of relatives we never knew existed, not to mention wonderful and helpful strangers. That is what is so wonderful about genealogy. It is the Golden Rule in action! God Bless. Diane in OH searching: Cuffman in MA, NY, PA, OH; Adams in PA; Woolever in PA, NY; Frost in NY; Fish in PA; Garman in PA, OH; Rae and Riddel in Scotland and PA; Jackson in NC, SC, and MO; Ellis in MO; Licklider, Eaton, Bowen, Spurgeon, Wright, and Zinn in MO; Freeman, McGrath, McGowan, Callaghan, Coffey in Ireland and OH; Leichleiter in Germany.