This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: MichaelWright12 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/2263.2990.1.1.1.1.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Good Luck David. If you go to Liverpool, I would hope that you would be able to spend enough time to follow leads into the Lancashire countryside or beyond, if it turns out you can find something that tells you they were not from Liverpool, but from somewhere else in the North or Northwest of England. By 1808, Liverpool was beginning to be a jumping place. The docks of Liverpool were handling over 40% of the world's trade, including 40% of the world slave trade and over 80% of the slave trade for England. Wealth was literally pouring into the city in those days. That fact alone makes me wonder why anyone who got to Liverpool would want to leave for America at a time when work was plentiful and money was flowing like never before in Liverpool, and England was beginning to edge toward doing something drastic to get their American colonies back. If your ancestors were going to America to take up some land, then they were probably country folks and not from Liverpool but from somewhere in the surrounding countryside. Searching for them in the surrounding countryside is where membership in Ancestry.com.uk might be of some help. On that site, you can search the parish records and other pre-census records by surname and given name and an approximate birth date and get back a slew of possibilities to investigate. For instance, you can do the search with the brothers name and ask it to search also for that name in association with the sister's name to narrow the choices. Of course you can ignore any census records hits, because they were gone before the first census was recorded for England. From what documents are left in the search list you might be able to go further, but my bet is you will eventually have to go on over and visit the areas you identify as possible origins and look at the local records. I never go over there without a fairly detailed itinerary of places I need to visit to answer a specific set of questions and most of that is developed using local history center assistance, the occasional hiring of a professional local genealogist and Ancestry.com.uk resources. Once you have done all that you can do from this side of the pond, you'll have to go on over to the other side. As small as England is, its history is vast compared to ours, and it is easy to get lost in just their index systems if you don't know what you are doing. SOG (The Society of Genealogists) of London put out a series of guidebooks describing the many different types of records in England and how to use the indexes to them to find what you need without wasting too much time. I'd recommend you get a set of those before you go and study them. Don't feel too badly if your first trip seems less than entirely successful. Like anything else, you can't know it all at once. However, if you keep trying, you will eventually master the essentials of the English way of cataloging records, and start to see good progress on every trip. On a personal note, if you are married, please consider this: don't spend all your time in the records offices and local history libraries with your nose buried in a folio or book. Make sure you make time to get out and about to have some fun seeing the local sights. Liverpool has an abundance of things to see and do, second only to London in my opinion and it isn't all about the Beatles either. In addition, if driving on the wrong side of the road and navigating round-abouts puts you off from renting a car to get about, know that the train/bus system in England is excellent and relatively inexpensive. For the price of a week's car rental, you can get to Manchester, Leed, York, Edinburgh and points north or London, Bath, Stonehenge and other points of interest in the South quite easily. The reason I am mentioning this, is that many years ago during our first trip to England to do genealogical research, I made the mistake of delaying our departure from the SOG library in London for a planned side trip out to the country to see Stonehenge; something my wife had told me all along she very badly wanted to do. I was not so keen on sitting on a train and bus for an hour and a half and then wandering around among a bunch of big stones as I was about finishing a hot pursuit records search at SOG. My reluctance to leave the library on time nearly caused us to miss the outbound train and my wife was fully prepared to leave me over it. She fumed the whole way out there. Once there, I was ashamed of my reluctance and failure to take that amazing adventure into proper account in my priorities. I have never made that type of mistake again. Now we plan every trip carefully and typically spend 50% of our time doing the tedious research stuff in the libraries and records offices, and the other 50% touring about to see sights we haven't seen before or going to a play or concert or getting involved in some activity with the locals at a sports field or bar or spa or whatever. We discovered that getting out to meet new people is not only great fun, but can have unexpected benefits. We find that most of the people we meet are very curious about what we are doing to find our origins in their community, and it has happened more than once that someone knows something or someone else who knows something I found very helpful to my research in that area. Anyway, have fun chasing these ancestors down because if you can't find the fun in doing it, it will wear you out in a hurry, and can even cost you your most important companionship. It is an addictive pass-time at best and does require some discipline to keep everything in perspective so your life doesn't go wonky on you. Again, good luck! Mike Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.