Hi Christine Of course, I completely agree with you as a fellow serious researcher. You have probably noted that I took Audrey to task slightly over one or two things in her messages and on her website. It will be interesting to see if she responds. As I mentioned in one of my messages to the list, she claims on her website that her Bownes can trace their ancestry back to the time of William the Conqueror. I fear this is a common phenomenon with our American cousins, who seem considerably more concerned about it than we are and there is a good deal of wishful thinking going on. What I suspect she has done is fall into the old trap of looking up surname definitions, noting that Bowne is a variant of Bohun or De Bohun (which can indeed be dated to the Conqueror's time since the name appears in the Domesday Book), put two and two together and made five! As I said, I very much doubt that the historical, documentary evidence is there to fill in all the gaps and links in between the Norman Conquest and the period her ancestor arrived in America. If she had the proof, why would she be asking for help on the Yorksgen list? As you and I both know, speculation is all very well but it doesn't begin to stand up without the evidence. Best wishes Roy