<<snipped>> In the case of WO 97 there *is* no alternative. <<snipped>> Funnily enough that's not totally true - as I found out recently. Ancestry have a dataset named "UK, Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Registers of Soldiers Who Served in Canada, 1743-1882 [database on-line]". This cites TNA's "Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Registers & Service Records, 1760-1882", i.e. WO97. I recently found the discharge papers of a distant relative, one Samuel Bateman, 834, discharged 1850 from the 49th Regiment of Foot. Said records were not on FMP. Apparently. Eventually I did find them - Samuel had been indexed as James. (Nope, me neither). So far as I can see, the title "Soldiers Who Served in Canada" is a misnomer. What seems to have happened is that WO97 papers were loaded for *regiments* with Canadian service in their history - Samuel did not serve in Canada, but did serve in India and China. The 49th had been in Canada some years before, but what percentage of WO97 papers for the 49th were loaded in this dataset, I've no idea. So if you have a subs to Ancestry - and that probably has to be one with Canadian access - you may, just may, strike it lucky. And in fact it gets even better as some of the regimental rosters for British Army regiments with a Canadian connection have also been filmed and loaded. Adrian B