> From: JohnMxzz@aol.com > I am new to this list and doing research in Scotland. I am from Connecticut > in the U.S. and am sorry to say I know little of Scotland, I surely need a > lot of help. ______________ Aye, Laddie...you may need some assistance but if these are your ancestors, then ye are a Scottish descendant, so we say welcome! There is a lot you can find without spending a penny. Do that stuff first. Go to http://www.familysearch.org and look for them there. This is a place that many times has less than accurate information (a number or a letter mis-transcribed) but it is a good first place to look! Also, Ellis Island offers - for free - a look at the emigration documents of each year you mention (1915 - 1930). The Gen Web had a discussion list for every surname...including Archibald. Go to that list...they are archieved. Looking at the 1881 census, and each census thereafter will be interesting also. And there is always the wonderful way I found one of my lines: just put out a message over the internet that I was looking for family descendants. A week later I hit the jackpot! Ultimately you will want either a birth, death, marriage or baptismal certificate to provide documentation of what you find for free. You may have to pay a small fee for these. Happy hunting and good fortune to you ~ Jean McGowan McAuley McLachlan Brocklebank
Hi Jean, I concur with your sentiments that much is available without payment, but surely the " I am not sure" syndrome comes into the equation. Certainly you can search the IGI ( which is only an index ) and scroll mailing lists but nothing beats having the original certificate displayed on your computer screen? Take for example the original poster, having a few credits left on Scotlands People, I managed to uncover 4 generations of his ancestors in 2 hrs. Could the same be said for the long trawl? If you have dates for events in family history, and yes retrieve them from all available source's ( IGI, mailing list ) you can do no better than confirming them and the only way to do that is the original documents. regards billy