Hello all: My McKIssack ancestors lived in Henry County, AL from about 1820 -1870 and one of the women married a James Stokes. Like everyone else, I have found the Stokes line a difficult one to trace. FWIW, the information I have on Stokes is on my website at: http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/m/c/k/David-Mckissack/ Also below is a paragraph and some footnotes from a McKissack family history book I'm writing. These contain a little info on the Stokes. "As the war erupted, many Southerners, including several of the McKissacks, their kin and neighbors, eagerly joined the Confederacy's armed forces. The McKissacks' neighbor Thomas T. Smith took the lead in organizing a company of volunteers from Henry County. This was one of the first units raised in Henry County and Smith was elected its commander (105). A young man named James Stokes joined Smith's company, which called itself the "Henry Blues." At the time the war broke out, James was listed by the census as living on the farm of John Wesley and Eliza Jane McKissack. James was apparently related to the McKissacks and had come to them when he was orphaned (106). A few years after the Civil War, James married John Wesley and Eliza Jane's daughter Mary. No doubt their attraction had first started to flower when James came to live on the McKissack farm." 105. Warren, Hoyt M., Henry's Heritage, (Henry County Historical Society, 1978), p.271. 106. Though there were several Stokes families in Henry County at this time, some living west of the McKissacks near Abbie Creek, we have been unable to tie James to one of them. His granddaughter Erie Barnes related in an interview with David Schultz, however, that James had been orphaned, possibly losing his parents to typhoid. Why he moved in with the McKissacks instead of one of the Stokes families is unclear. Perhaps he hired on with John Wesley as a farm hand.