Hi Barbara, >I have my ancestors born in northern Ireland but can't find any proof. It's really really hard to get 'proof' for people born in your timeframe as there are very few church records. There were Church of IReland records, but many of our Presbyterian ancestors didn't get married or baptize their children in them. Alas, a third of them burnt in the Four Courts Fire in 1922. Still we are urged to check them if they survive for our parish. Do you have a clue if they married in America or Ireland?? For example, birth dates/places of their children. We're told to research collateral lines by the gurus....one of the reasons is that we can make deductions when we do not have proof. Proof is a 'smoking gun', but just as many murders are solved with circumstantial evidence, ditto for genealogical mysteries. So figure out if the kids were born in Ireland. This may be impossible to do but if you can prove they knew one another in Ulster, then probably he's from near her. >Wife, Sarah Skillen, b. maybe County Down, Ireland If I can find the email addy of a guy I was corresponding with about Skillen, I'll send on. It should (emphasis here on the maybe part <grin>) not be toooo hard to tell if Skills lived in Down by using some fairly standard (alas) Irish 'fuzzy research' methods. Like checking the Tithe Applotment index for them. This was 100 years after yours were born, but it does help to narrow down the area where they were from. McNeil is "too common" for you to easily find without a lot more evidence. Check to see if there were others in Chester Co that y ou can connect him to. What kind of evidence?? Any and all family clues. The names of your kids. Most importantly, do a lot of work to determine if they arrived as a family or not. If the entire family came over, they had some money so they will be easier to find in Ireland than if your ancestor came as an indentured servant, worked off his term, and then set up a household. However it suggests he had an skill -- so what was it? Blacksmith, mason, etc. Unskilled laborers were not really wanted in 18th century America. It's a clue to family class and possibly records back in Ulster. You may have seen the TV shows that profile murderers. You need to do the same thing -- profile this guy and then research to determine what types of records do exist in which he may appear. Worse case there's DNA studies, which, alas, is what most of us will need to use since there are so very few records that name poorer people in Ulster. There are still enough records about for Ireland to keep you going for years researching them, though most of us give up long before that. One fellow I heard talk once, after a life of searching for his ancestors (He was a big wig at the Family History Library in Salt Lake so he had done GOOD research) did find out where they came from. He found them in the index to NIDS (National Index of Documentary Studies) -- one of those scholarly indexes to manscript collections. Clues: his ancestor was a quartermaster for George Washington. Turns out he had been from a merchant family in Drogheda and Dublin. Makes sense if you know what a quartermaster does! So even his military history can give you valuable clues to his origins. If quartermaster he was a educated middle class kinda guy, maybe a merchant. Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net