First tho ... the KYBARREN server and the KYBIOGRAPHIES server seem to be down this morning, posts will go out later! There are 2 things I always recommend - take oral history with a grain of salt until it can be proven - and never stop looking - those brick walls can come tumbling down. In one of the cases below, it took 60 or more years; the other over 35 years. Forgive the personal references but I think this will encourage you (forget the length of time it took!). #1. I spent this weekend actually working on my own maternal line, a rarity. One of my dead ends had long been my gggg grandmother, one Dorothy Moody of NH to IL. My genealogically blessed aunt (yes, the one who taught me this biz 36 yrs ago), sent me a book on Unity NH where she was born and some miscellaneous family sheets. This took her back 3 more generations thankfully but ran me into a roadblock. Her ancestors did NOT hook up to their ancestors as shown. I spent hours reading censuses, ancestry.com, Family History, etc. etc and got into old books on the family. Bingo! There was the right line; she was not descended from one John Moody the Emigrant, but from his cousin, William Moody the Emigrant - they appear to have come to America together from England. But, that roused my curiosity. Moody. I remembered a Moody from my younger years - a very famous evangelist who died in 1899 named Dwight L. Moody. Just for the fun of it, I did some web searching and found his pedigree, published by his own family (son and grandson) and lo and behold, he was a descendant of William Moody too and a close cousin to my gggg grandmother, Dorothy. I called my aunt and she said something to the effect that my (Sandi's) grandmother and her mother always told the family that they were related to Dwight L Moody but we always thought it was just a tale of a family wanted to be related to someone famous. The family told this story back in the 1880's but no one bothered to find out if it was true or not. For a change, I didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater! So - do some investigating; the story might have been elaborated on over the years, or changed when passed from ancestor to ancestor - but maybe - just maybe it might be true! #2. Then, I was working on my Dad's family and a stumbling block has always been my ggg grandfather, one David Laughery, who was born "abt 1795 in OH" with his father born in northern Ireland. He is shown in many Logan Co IL records and his wife was always shown as an Elizabeth. On my records I have carried her name as Elizabeth Williams - and doggone it - I haven't the foggiest idea of where I got that name - I didn't document well in my early days. Last night, before calling it a day and quite tired of eyes, I clicked on one more site called Find a Cemetery. None of our families ever made it to sites like that but I typed in Laughery. Laughery can be spelled some 100 different ways - or more. Bingo - there is listed a cemetery that was JUST transcribed in July 2006 by a lady I don't know - on a cemetery I'd never heard up, basically in the back yard of where my Dad grew up - a big one. And there is my David Laughery and his wife. Now I have his full date of birth and problems. His wife was Elizabeth J Birks, not Williams, but I know it is my ggg grandfather. Buried with him is his son Nathan and the wife of my gg grandfather (who is buried in a different cemetery). I went back on the web and did a search for Elizabeth Birks - and there she was, neat as a pin, married to a Thomas David Laughery or Lowery. I wrote her; she just emailed me almost 100 pages of data. They had the Birks but no information on the Laughery - which I have. We have a problem as there are 2 stones there - one for David Laughery born on a certain date and dying on a certain date in 1795. He's ours. Next to it is a stone for Thomas David Laughery born on exactly the same day and month, but dying in 1794. Either a later stone was put up and and the got the year wrong, or the stones were mis-transcribed. The brick wall still has a few bricks standing ... I still can't find his parents or grandparents but from northern Ireland I know he came - the family "castle" is still standing! So this afternoon I'm sorting through wills, deeds and everything the lady sent me and helping her as she helps me. 36 yrs of looking - and I was likely no more than 2 miles from this cemetery when I was back in IL in early August. I'm bribing my aunt to run over there and shoot some pictures for me, but what a find. Don't give up!!!!!!!! Sandi Sandi's Puzzlers: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gensoup/gorin/puz.html SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/