Hi everyone, I have missed hearing from you Robert A.-but I figured with your move and everything, you just had too much to do. Then I heard from Lyle and Barbara and everything made sense. Hope everything has finally settled down for you. I like the idea of having both the newsletter and the Rootsweb available to all the Rainwater researcher's. It helps a lot to be able to re-read what is in the newletter and in the e-mail and compare notes. It's like talking to a relative and just some little something will jog someone's memory and they'll think " I know the answer to that". For years I've had a family history on a Rainwater family-then I started writing to someone on-line and they said-this man had these other 2 brothers, also and bingo- I was able to give him descendants and relatives he didn't know he had!!! Every little tidbit helps to solve puzzles. Granted, they also bring up more questions to be answered-but hey- that's what doing genealogy is all about. Sometimes,Hal, you have to collect all the Rainwater data you can in order to sort out families-even in KY!!! I'm from the extreme southern Rainwater line. By that, I mean Ga>Ala>Ms>La- but--- they came from KY!! At least mine did. However, as you say, there's a lot of William's (with no way to know who their spouse was) and the only way to track them is a nominal census. Get's frustrating at times. I also get kind of frustrated when someone comes on-line and says he can trace his Rainwater back to John and Mary. All I can say is- show us the proof!! The records just simply do not exist. If they do-they're buried so far in the Archives that no one can find them-and some very experienced researchers have tried, believe me. Maybe someone out there has an Old Family Bible with the Rainwater Family in it and it's buried in someone's attic in an old trunk. Well, I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings-it certainly wasn't my intention when I started this letter. I just wanted to say we need both systems because some people do not have computers and the internet and don't intend to. Glidie