Hi Betty, I have the same thing on just about all of my ancestor's land grants in Arkansas as well. I phoned the BLM in Georgia, what the man told me there was that the "Assignee of" column was just the previous owner and there was no way to tell who they were. My rebuttal to that is.. Original Homesteads can only be on property never owned before, So why would they have to have an Assignee column unless it was inherited (or the same person) It is my belief that they are one in the same... here is why, The land in Arkansas was given to the Choctaw nation in exchange for all the Choctaw land in Mississippi (Treaty of Dancing Rabbit, signed by Chief Tubbe) The land in Arkansas was assigned to individual Choctaw persons rather than the whole tribe, but it was still tribal lands not open to white intrusion or ownership. The Choctaw people were smart enough to see that the American government had a hard time keeping their treaties. And these people had lived a long time on their land and didn't want to move again. So when they heard that the land was going to be opened for Homestead, they just went down to the land office and signed in as white men homesteading new land that had been given/sold to them by a Choctaw (who were actually themselves). I hope this makes sense, I have since found many links for my ancestors to the Choctaw nation, some of the brothers and sisters of my ancestors were removed to Oklahoma and were living in Indian Territory even past the 1920s. My great grandfather even had land in OK smack dab in the middle of the Choctaw nation. Yet I have never found them on any roles. I think they had 2 names. Their White name and their Indian name... It is a shame being an Indian had so much stigma attached to it. It denied us the truth to our heritage.. and makes it one heck of a hard search too! : ) Cyd Rawls http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rawls/