Hi folks, This is the Scotch-Irish list and I'm the admin, so I have given myself permission to post the URL of this here website that does French genealogy in the hopes it helps with these Hanchettes: http://www.geneanet.org/ Notta lot of help for me...my ex's MERLEs were originally Genovese, went to Switzerland and then France, though there are French Merles. He's (and supposed moi) still a 'dit Merle'. Apparently the MERLOs were bankers to Al Capone but please don't tell my mother as I'm not sure she could handle it.... For myself I'm a British mutt like the rest of yeh....Actually my ex's paternal line is this fake French/Italian mafia stuff but his maternal line is DUNCAN from Donegal and GRAY from Kings County They were Catholics, the Grays, so I can't help with any Proddy Grays. This is also the Isadora DUNCAN line: she was half Ulster Scot and half Irish but an awful lot of her was pure O'Gorman (from Claire, probably.) But anyway the website above might establish the surname in France. Durn...forget how to say "Happy New Year" in French. "Frohliches Weinachten"....no....that's definitely not it!! No wonder that marriage didn't last <grin> Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net