Got my dvr set.

Wish I'd seen this sooner. I missed it, but I got in late.

Thanks Dave I mentioned in another thread that I have health issues that prevent me from having a garden so I don't have a lot to can but I do like to keep a few canned items on hand. I love beans and peas etc so I always need some jars ready to grab off the shelf. Its harvest time around here so I hope to find a few goodies to buy to put up...I was refreshing my memory on canning dried beans by checking in to Harvest as I hadn't done it in awhile. I only have one jar of white beans left so it's time to get busy. I am doing chemo at the moment and it slows me down but hasn't killed me yet. I am dealing with my fourth cancer since 2002....This one is probably going to get me but I bought a new sewing machine yesterday so how is that for optimism. I have been sewing chemo hats. Today I put fresh cream style corn in the freezer. Chemo tomorrow though so I will be down for a couple of days....just a couple though can't keep an old broad down for long..I figure that at 76 something else might get me before the cancer if I just keep fighting....

Audrey, I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say, "First you pay them a monthly fee then you pay marriage and birth specialists. Then military specialists. Etc etc ..." Yes, you can join Ancestry either on a monthly membership, 6-month membership, or annual membership. There are also different levels - U.S. Discovery gives you access to all U.S. records on Ancestry.com. World Explorer gives you access to all U.S. and international records on Ancestry.com. All Access gives you access to all U.S. and international records on Ancestry.com as well as access to Newspapers.com and Fold3.com (the military records). Birth, death, and marriage records are available on Ancestry.com for most locations. You can pay for memberships to Newspapers.com and/or Fold3.com independent of Ancestry membership. You can contact Ancestry either online or by calling 1-800-596-3230 and get a free estimate of how much it will cost for the research you request. They have many different professional genealogists with expertise in different geographical areas. As mentioned above, the Family Search website (affiliated with the LDS) is free to use. You have to create an account (username and password), but absolutely no fees are involved. It is not uncommon to find images there that are not available on Ancestry (and vice versa). For some of the images, however, you must be at a Family Search affiliated library to be able to view the images. There is undoubtedly a Family History Center (affiliated with the LDS) near you. They are all over. Again, totally free to use, and there are volunteers on site who will be happy to assist you. Because they are part of the LDS church as is the Family Search website, you will be able to view all images on line while you are there. When you are researching, bear in mind that names were often misspelled, and ages/dates of birth, etc., are not always accurate. Immigrants often changed their surnames when they came to the U.S., by dropping/changing the final vowel (e.g., Rossi to Ross; Silvestri to Silvestro); changing a vowel in the middle (e.g., Zuccarello to Zuccorello ); dropping a double letter to a single letter (e.g., Lannaconne to Lannacone; Zarella to Zarela); changing to a similar name (e.g., Rossi to Rose); or simply changing it altogether (e.g., Leonetti to Sullivan). Also, people filling out forms, such as Census enumerations, marriage licenses, birth/death certificates, etc., were unfamiliar with so many of the new, foreign names that came into the country, and didn't understand the accents, so they put down names somewhat phonetically. And many of the immigrants didn't have much education, couldn't read/write, so they didn't know what was being written down as their name. Also, if you are looking at international records (many are available on FamilySearch.org) you need to keep in mind the fact that the folks transcribing the records are not necessarily fully fluent in both the foreign language and English. I have seen many ridiculous transcriptions. Good luck with your research!