thank you to all who replied, both to me personally and to others on the list, you've been very helpful. what I could not access yesterday works fine today, including the Y. archealogical society site, so all is well. esp. thanks to Andy for that list! Y. A. S. has two numbers for Birstall, and since Horbury is #3 on your list, then I assume the #3 they have for Birstall is for another list. I would assume that makes the other number, #164, Birstall's number for the list Andy posted, which would mean that there are hundreds of parish records not available for free online. well, off to do more digging around, it's been a while so there's lots of new items of interest. oh, since I'm here, don't forget to check openlibrary.org. lots of scanned books to read on it, and my favorite reading program of all that are on the net. pages flip smoothly and type is clear and easy on the eyes. a check of Birstall displayed 3 pages of books of interest for that parish. unfortunately in this instance, none have been scanned. but they will be, some day. they do include the Parish records of Birstall. this company scans books from everywhere in the world, and also lists books that they have not yet been cleared to scan, and books they have not yet got around to scanning, but I've already made a few breakthroughs from books they have scanned. they are actively busy scanning books, so if the book you want isn't scanned, keep checking back. I found a book written by a distant cousin, Walter Burton Harris of Surrey and Morocco, scanned at openlibrary. I found that many U.S. county histories are also scanned at openlibrary. it's a treasure trove for researchers. Cornelia BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }