> Could you or someone else explain what Egle's Notes and Queries is? I have seen > it referred to many different times, but I have never seen an explanation of > what it is. > I believe Egle was the librarian of the Pennsylvania State Library or at any rate he held a position there. Perhaps someone else on the list knows his exact position. Egle was a genealogist/historian, and he collected all sorts of pieces of information from many different sources. I'm not sure how these tidbits were originally published, but "Notes and Queries" (published in the 1890's for the most part) is a collection of the information he compiled over the years. Some of the information in "Notes and Queries" is very reliable and comes from readily identifiable sources (e.g., church records, such as the Bindnagles Church). Other pieces of information are not worth the paper they are written on (or plastic, if you have a CD-ROM). Egle pretty much just published every piece of information he received and made little or no effort to verify it. The series can be a useful place to find obscure pieces of information, but you need to exercise extreme caution when interpreting this information. Just because it is published in "Notes and Queries" does not make it true. But I guess this is true of all sources, especially secondary sources. If the information concerns church records, tax lists, testate records, etc., it is probably accurate and in any event you can readily verify it. In some respects, the most intriguing and valuable entries are the stories and tales, but these are unfortunately the portions of the series that are most prone to inaccuracies. Dave David N. Blauch, Associate Professor Department of Chemistry, Davidson College P.O. Box 1719, Davidson, NC 28036 Tel. (704) 892-2308 FAX (704) 892-2709 http://www.chm.davidson.edu/dablauch/dablauch.html