Lately I have been thinking more and more often of the old joke about the drunk who has lost his keys and is assiduously searching for them under a streetlight. Someone asks him where he lost them, and he says, "Oh, up there in the next block." "So why are you searching here?" "Because the light is better here." On the net I search and I surf and it is great but really, what percentage of the census, of the Civil War regiments are actually on the net? What are the odds? But I live in North Carolina, I really can't go rummaging around in courthouses in Pennsylvania, not unless I know much more specifically what I am searching for. And yes, one can send for things, but often it seems to me that to send for something, to fill in the form, you have to already know what you are trying to find out. You can't get there from here. But not being that sure what the alternatives are, and not finding them very compelling or attractive as ways to spend time, and because the computer, like Mount Everest, is THERE, I surf and search some more. Now LUPHER is a rare name; there just aren't too many LUPHERs. A Yahoo search for LUPHERs a couple of weeks ago only yields a couple of websites. One of them belongs to a 12 year old kid. It says he is a Civil War buff. Now there is a family story about greatgrandmother LUPHER and the famous abolitionist John Brown. So I write the kid and I tell the story, although I think its authenticity is dubious. What do I have to lose, maybe I can catch his interest. A few days pass. The kid answers, it turns out he is out in Washington State, and his father told him there were a lot of LUPHERs in Pennsylvania but he doesn't know much. Suggests I email his father, provides his address. This sounds like a time-wasting runaround so I don't give it much of a priority but after a few more days I email his father. Today his father answers, and I am sure you know the denoument: He has greatgrandmother Rosetta but all he knows is when she was born (and, crucially, who to). He also has ALL the direct-line LUPHERs back to one Hans Jacob LUPHER, born in Switzerland in 1725 and getting off a ship, and he knows what ship, in Philadelphia in 1752 !!!!! Can you believe I am now four generations further back than I was five hours ago? A century. He got off the ship 99 years before greatgrandma Lupher was born. My relationship to this new cousin is that we share a ggggrandfather (how I have been wanting to write those g's when I see other people write them!) He also has a cousin who he says knows 'much more' about the PA Luphers and I should contact him, and another cousin who knows about the ones who went West in the late 19th century, and I should contact her. Now if I could just do this with the others, but I don't really think this sort of thing will work with a name like FRANK or KELLER, there are just too many of them. But you never know, so I will have to surf some more. I'm not sure I know what the moral is but this time the computer worked. Are all genealogists manic-depressives? -- jan <janiceaf@ix.netcom.com> Researching names: FRANK, KELLER, LUPHER, PENROSE, SCHULTZ, TAYLOR ==== PENNA-DUTCH Mailing List ==== New? Looking for a quick connection? Visit the surnames list associated with this mail list at http://members.aol.com/PennaDutch/pdlsurnames.html