I don't know who the person is that you are contacting, perhaps a private researcher? But if you haven't gotten an acknowledgement of your request, by all means, contact her again. She could of been off on a long holiday, and missed your message.
As for ancestry.com, there is a free version called Rootsweb.com. They share the same message board, so you can post there, and also do a search on names. Rootsweb doesn't offer the records like census and ship's manifests like Ancestry does, but you can view other peoples posted family trees. I found subscribing to Ancestry for 3 months was about all I needed. I made a list of what I wanted to research before I signed on, and then spent much time those 3 months gathering data. I found some new info on relatives in the USA that were living with family, off the USA census records. But if census is all you needed, lots of folks will look things up if you post a request. Also many libraries will allow you to access Heritage Quest on-line from home, where you can search census up to 1920. Check the web site of your local libary or call them.
There are more and more records becoming available on line for free. Which is wonderful, so we can all save our litas for a trip to the old country
