The 1880 census on CD is great for 2 reasons: 1. The WPA soundex only indexed households that had at least one child under the age of 10, which obviously left out a lot of people. The CD has ALL families. 2. The WPA soundex indexed only heads of households. The CD is an EVERY name index. What this means is that you can search for children who were born before 1880 even if you don't know what their parents' given names were. Also, if you don't find the head of a household you're looking for, try another member of the household. Just this afternoon I was helping a patron at the FHC where I'm on staff. She was looking for a Hiram Mason whose wife was Mary and who had a son named Ortis. Mason is a common surname, but it shouldn't be too hard to find HIRAM Mason. Wrong! We then tried looking for Ortis Mason, since Ortis is a very uncommon name. Couldn't find him either. Finally, we tried Mary Mason and came up with more than 560 Mary Masons. We narrowed the search to the Prairie States Region and only 62 Mary Masons. And that did the trick. We found the family, with Hiram listed as H.S. Mason, and Ortis listed as Otis. There was also another child listed, and both of Hiram's parents! Another patron is looking for an ancestor who was orphaned and sent to live with an aunt, but she doesn't know the aunt's married name, so she's looking at EVERY woman whose given name was Sophronia (and every conceivable misspelling of Sophronia!). When you're working with a computerized index and can search on any field, don't limit yourself to just the surname. And, if you still don't find them, try using the soundex backwards to think of all the possible misspellings. Think creatively to get the max from this wonderful new source! Mary Popovich Busia's Roots, Professional Genealogy Author of "526 Marriages of Milwaukee's St. Stanislaus Parish, 1900-1909"