Hmmmm... Now I'm thinking about Ancestry.com's "Preferred Plan" at $59.95 for a year. This would be, as was pointed out, $5.00 per month as opposed to $10.00 per month for the "Quarterly Plan". Mr./Ms. Marshall, is Ancestry.com's online information mostly indices or actual records -- or both? (I know that you said they are printed records, rather than photocopies of originals, but that would be okay too as long as they were transcribed accurately.) Have you explored their Virginia holdings at all? Do they have church records and cemetery records? Thanks. Shelley --------------------------- www.ancestry.com> is definitely a "for profit" operation and everyone's budget is unique but personally I have certainly gotten my $5 per month investment back many fold. Most of my searching has been in Kentucky records (for which they have good maps and data on land grants, census indices,marriages). Of course, as with printed compiled records (which most of their stuff is from), someday I will need to "prove" crucial data by finding the underlying records, which will be easier to find because of Ancestry. If you don't want to pay, you can still get the daily/weekly newsletter with the announcements of free access (for a limited time) to selected materials. ----------------------------- Charlie, Thanks for the info. My problem is I don't know enough yet to be able to cite a particular census entry. I'm still at the point in my research where I need to find out what people named Thomas were living in Prince William County in the early 1800s. I checked out the Ancestry.com site but, unfortunately you have to have a membership in order to access their databases. :-( Their membership seems a tad expensive but I might consider their 3-month plan for $19.95. I'd just have to try and squeeze all my online research into a 3-month period. :-) Does anyone have any comments about their membership with Ancestry.com? Is it worth the investment? Shelley