A couple of suggestions - Ancestry.com is often available at no cost through your local library - all you need is a library card. Usually you have to do the research in the library on one of their computers - but its free! Another resource available through many libraries is Heritage Quest - this resource also contains many years of census (and other items as well) - sometimes you can find something at HQ, which you can't find thru Ancestry - and vice versa. Nice part about HQ is that with a library card, you can usually access it on your own computer in the comfort of your home, by going to the county library site an using your card number as your access code. If your ancestors turn out to be in Berks county/Reading, you are very fortunate! The courthouse is very helpful (not all county courthouses are) and much information is available online (not true for many courthouse records in other counties). When you find something on-line on the Courthouse site and you need to mail away for the item, the costs are very reasonable. The Reading Library will also do limited searching for you - by that I mean if you have, for example, a date of death, you can ask them to try and locate an obituary - provided they have the newspaper for that date. Their costs are reasonable, too. The Reading Eagle newspaper is also available for free on-line through Google News Archives. There is a search function, but that doesn't always work, so bear that in mind if you get a "no records found" answer. Sometimes you need to hand search the paper - which works better, the more definite the date! My final comment - if you think you have relatives in the Wilkes-Barre (Luzerne County) area, there is a wonderful email list - Courthouse Gang for that county. Very active and most helpful people. (Their courthouse is an example of the opposite of Berks county, unfortunately...) Good luck! Ruth Riley researching Nangle, Larkin, Henke, Winter, Felix, Siegfried in Reading