Thanks to Forrest for that URL! I know what I'll be doing later on (downloading and reading!) Yesterday while working I found a great website that publishes some old, rare works on early American history. http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~wcarr1/ It's dense stuff! I also found this website with some free Irish stuff: http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/frame_800.cfm Most significantly it has an Irish tombstone collection with a free search: http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/frame_800.cfm If you see something interesting check LDS catalog to see if it's filmed and in LDS. I also was browsing through the local (western PA) newspaper's collecton of historical stuff. It is where I picked up the LOSSING link (above). Here is part 3 of their series on the Kiski trail, probably taken by the lads in Cumberland when they came west during the French and Indian (Seven Years) War to do in the Indians at Kittanning. <SPLAT!> http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/articles/2135 Cruise to the bottom for some URLS. Some don't work but I will have to locate updated ones as they link to the local Indian traders (Croghan, etc) in whose memoirs one might find the names of any ancestors living here. We have forgotten that much of western Cumberland and of course anything west of that (which was infested with Indians and French in the mid 1700s anyway) were not open to settlement till I think it was 1758. Before that the Quaker Gov. in Philly actually forcably removed people from Indian lands. So ancestors living there illegally were not going to declare themselves, now would they? Many even after that date just settled (after all, Willie Penn did invite them!) and left the details like surveys and warrants to their descendents or the guy they sold out to. Hey, in Ireland we didn't own the land and esp. in Ulster we sold our holdings (leases) and improvements to the next tenant. So often these folk don't appear in tax lists (hard to tax people who are living illegally on land the gov says it has no right to tax, anyway since it's Indian land --assuming you can find them and they don't shoot you first when you show up to try to collect taxes from them), etc, so if you can find traders' records, it can be a big win. Many of these people didn't believe in probate courts either. Speaking from personal experience with my ancestors who settled illegally in what would be Butler Co in the very early 1800s. (Not legal to settle there till 1807 I think it was....mine were the second guys to farm that place). So if I can find new URLs to the Croghan journals, whatta win! Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net