Hi Margaret

I don't have any Craines in my direct line, but there are several Craine lines in some of the branches-by-marriage.

An MI is a monumental inscription, the writing carved onto the headstone, although lots of people were buried without a headstone. The wording on them is sometimes useful, but can occasionally have been recorded wrongly due to the fact that by the time they were recorded by someone going round the graveyard with a pen and paper, the words had partially worn away.

Apart from the "free" censuses on Ancestry etc, you have to pay to see the actual pages, either by subscription (choose the basic one ---- ancestry.co.uk---to keep the cost down) or as pay per view, which I've never tried so can't comment on.

It's difficult to tell from your messages just what information you had as a starting point. Am I right in thinking that you knew nothing at all about the father and siblings of your grandmother, Margaret b 1875, other than their names ?

Do you know how to use the familysearch.org and the iomfhs.im websites ? They're free, and you don't have to be a member. The most fun you can have in this genealogy thing is by searching for people, dates, relationships etc, and fitting the pieces together, asking questions on this board to keep you on the right track. It would spoil your fun if you were handed it all in a neat package.

My advice is that you start with a big sheet of paper and, using the info in the last few messages, sketch out a rough tree starting halfway down with Margaret b 1875 and her siblings, adding their children below, and then working up the page / backwards in time, concentrating on the Craine line. If your spatial awareness is as bad as mine, you'll "see" it all better when it's sketched out, rather than just words in lists.

Practise using the familysearch and iomfhs sites to verify the info you've already been given. Look up the census entries using www.iomfhs.im then "research", then "census index".

www.familysearch.org takes some practice to get useful info from it. Ask for advice if you get frustrated with it, but don't give up.

Jean C