The response to the roll call has been great, especially because this list is normally very quiet, though very helpful and friendly. Therefore, I'd like to suggest a new topic: The importance of documentation. Please bear with me as I tell you my horror story........ When I began researching my family just a year and a half ago, I went onto an internet message board and found two other people researching the same family. I was thrilled! The three of us began e-mailing frequently. One woman, not in my direct line, said she had been researching the family for 20 years, and promised to send the other woman and I a ton of documents. I had two huge resources: the nearby public library which had all the censuses and city directories for Philadelphia where most of my our ancestors were from, and a trip to Philly during which I found information that she had not found in 20 years, specifically, our original grandmother in this country, and one of her children that this woman had not known about. I was soon spending a full day each week at the library, coming home with a ton of information, every bit of which I copied and sent on to my newfound "cousin." Meanwhile, nothing was coming from her. Her excuses were that whe was busy, ill, didn't have a car, but mostly that she had no money to copy and mail the documents. Eventually she sent a few things, totalling less than $5 cost to her, then asked me to help read and interpret what she had sent. Soon after she asked me to send her all of my data which is in outline form. She also asked the 3rd "cousin" to do the same. Then she put our information into her format and e-mailed it back to us for editing. We each edited her work several times. The spelling and grammar mistakes were astounding, but mostly they were just careless mistakes. Eventually, she had both lines correct and offered to mail the 3rd cousin and I each other's information. By this time I started to find discrepancies in what she told me. For example, she said she had sent for military records, then said she sent for the forms to order them, but she had posted an internet message 3 years before saying she already had the records. There's lots more, but here's the punchline: The 3rd cousin and I soon found that our e-mail conversations weren't making sense in light of the information the other cousin had sent us, so we exchanged our own information. To our shock we discovered that we had been sent information that was totally distorted! Since we had edited the other cousin's work and knew that it was correct, this had to be deliberate. My mother was listed as the daughter of her aunt and my grandfather had no children. The maiden names of all women who had married into the family had been deleted. Her motivation? Only her pschiatrist could guess!! As it turned out, some angel was sitting on my shoulder when I began researching and next to every fact I listed, I also listed the source and had document copies for everything. Therefore I was easily able to correct my data by just eliminating everything that this person had told me. In those days I had maybe 20 pages of data, but now have 10 times that. Where would I be if I discovered this now? My point is to encourage everyone to document every single thing. We all know how costly this hobby/obsession can be, but it is well worth the cost to ensure that our data is accurate, particularly if we plan to write a book at any time. Best of luck to all. Merle