Dear List Members, I am not intending to flame anyone here and do not wish to offend so I am hoping that neither the list nor I will be bombarded with further messages related to this subject...please bear with me. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I appreciate the remarks of Neil today as he seems to be the only one who hasn't made some somewhat snide remark about the church and its members in one degree or another. This thread started with a DAR vs. LDS subject line and it seems to me to be disintegrating into a bit of a bash against the church and its members. This list is not the place for this. Indeed, in a country where many of our ancestors immigrated specifically for freedom of religion, bashing the LDS church or any other has no place on any list. (I will say however that since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in 1830 it has come in for more than the usual share of bashing and things are actually better now than they were in times past! At least we are not being forced from our homes and threatened with death at every turn for following our consciences with regards to our choice of religion as many members were in times past!) Considering the majority of our ancestors more than likely immigrated to this country for freedom of religion as well as other opportunities in the New World, it seems even more inappropriate to bash the church that maintains the world's largest collection of genealogical materials we can all benefit from. At least the website maintained by the church gives us another good starting place and then it is up to each of us to check, check and recheck the data for veracity and note where we found the data. Whenever possible we should contact the submitter and determine where and how they came by their information and what their connection to the line is. Now, I am not saying that the records in the Ancestral File or the IGI are without error but it should be understood that at least as far as the submissions to the Ancestral File go, more submissions to the file have been made by NON members of the church than by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so if there are mistakes in the information they were just as likely to have been made by a non-LDS person as by an LDS person. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is very sensitive to copyright issues and I do not believe 'representatives' of the church would assimilate information into their database without permission from whoever owns the information. Again, however, it needs to be remembered that other than personal notes and anecdotes about our ancestors, much if not all of the information in their database (or any other online database) is a matter of public record and therefore not personally owned by any one person or group of persons! Granted there are disreputable persons who do what Mr. Miller suggested but not the church as a whole and again, remember most of the individual submissions were submitter by NON members. I suggest that anyone with questions about the Family History Library maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints visit their website at www.familysearch.org and read all about the library and how it functions there instead of bandying about comments which are somewhat misleading to list members and perhaps others who may learn of the comments. Many if not all the questions you might have may be answered there and if you have further questions there is a 'contact us' spot to inquire further. We should all bear in mind that ANY and ALL information submitted to ANY database is only as reliable as the researcher who has submitted it. Quite often it is unfortunate that many folks who do genealogy as a hobby don't know how to do anything beyond finding the name they are looking for. It has nothing to do with being LDS or not, it has to do with integrity in ones research and commitment to finding the right leaves for our family trees. There are no reliable shortcuts in family history research that I have found. What we do have are public and private records and it is OUR responsibility to search out the correct information for ourselves where our ancestors are concerned. Regardless of where online (or other source) information is found it should be taken with a grain of salt and verified as much as it can be before being accepted as fact. Information is only as good and reliable as the person who informed the recorder and the recorder who recorded the information. Errors happen on all fronts. Look at the census records if you doubt me! Many birth, death and marriage records have errors in them as well for one reason or another. Online information needs to be treated as a good place to start, not as 100% factual information. Surname group lists and lists such as this one are designed to hopefully connect us to others researching the same lines we are. If information is found online it seems prudent to me that we should contact whoever posted it to ascertain where and how they came by the information and then determine how reliable the information is. Being a BYU graduate doesn't necessarily mean one is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Anyone with the necessary academic ratings, money for tuition and willingness to abide by church standards while attending the Y may do so regardless of their religion. The church does not have a tendency to bundle up submitted information and sell it back to submitters. What they do have is the Pedigree Resource File and it is a valuable resource to have should one ELECT to purchase it. There is no obligation to do so. There is no membership fee to access the information online from the church. The information owned by the church is free of charge through the Family History Centers across the world and the main library in SLC is beyond belief but there is a small charge when one orders in microfilms and such to a FHC away from SLC. Still for what one gets the costs are minimal. Personal Ancestral File may be downloaded free from their website or the disk is less than $10 vs. the cost of many retailed record bases. I think the world and certainly anyone interested in family history research owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the church for all their efforts and commitment to family history. They say two heads are better than one but too many cooks spoil the broth. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and one bad apple etc... so there are many two sided coins to be dealt with as we travel through life in this estate. I propose we get back to the matter at hand and concentrate on our mutual ancestors from the area we are interested in and put this thread to rest. Very truly yours, Dianna in MO Researching KEGLEY (variations of spelling Goeckel, Kockhle, Geckley, Keckly, Cagley, Keeghley and Cakeley among others!) They migrated from Lancaster or Lebanon Pennsylvania to Wythe County Virginia about 1767.