Dear Cousins, You would do well to check out the work of Lee Minnis, who has put a copious amount of genealogy at his website, called Lee's Links I and II. At the first site are the families of William Yate; Robert Morgan; Stephen Johnson; Joseph Gill;Joseph Parker; Randel McDonald;Alexander Bell;Jacob Crider; James Ross;John Kirkpatrick; William Spurgin; George Moore;Thomas Browning;James Minnis; at the second William Grant, William Strother, and Peter Perkins. http://home.att.net/~mlminnis/ Many of these families are very critical to the history of the backcountry. We find In the Strother family, for instance, the interconnection of Madisons, Washingtons, Zachary Taylor, the Taliaferros, and the Smith/Preston family of Augusta County, Virginia. This is important for me because my grandfather George Strather/Strother Smith was born posthumously after his father and namesake was murdered during the 1878 Bannock War in Eastern Oregon. Tracking Smiths is hard enough, but tracking these Smiths has taken me over 30 years. I am (almost!) certain the ones who are my family were among the earliest settlers in Trimble and Henry counties in northern Kentucky, and one, whom I believe was my ancestor, Park(e) Smith, met his demise in Kentucky, and I have speculated he too may have met his fate at the hands of the Indians in that era. Parke Smith was the brother of Susanna Smith, who married William Preston of Augusta county Virginia fame, and the son of Francis Smith, the gentleman carpenter of Hanover County. These too, are the Virginia families on which Edward Pleasants Valentine based his research and produced the EPV Papers in 4 wonderful volumes. Lee Minnis has good information on the interrelationships of many of the backcountry families, and a look at his pages will provide good clues for further research, even if you don't find a specific ancestor there. Thanks, Mary Ann for your clue about Dennis Pennington's Indiana census involvement. Dennis was one of the first settlers of that region, and is pretty famous in the Pennington family. It is always nice to see information that humanizes our ancestors and makes them more real to us. And thanks especially for the comments about the List. It's nice to know that you find it helpful. Sharing and caring is the name of our game, and you managed to get two nice hits in those departments! It snowed here this morning and now the sun is shining! The snow, or moisture content at least, is much needed for our local farmers and also for the mountain mushroom crop that we hope to begin enjoying in a couple of months. I am hot at the design of the new Backcountry Crossroads pages and am working hard to get the bookstore set up this week. If we order together, I can promise some meaningful discounts for your genealogy and history book purchases. How does 20% sound??!! Love, Your Cousin, Carolyn Carolyn McDaniel cmacdee@centurytel.net ========================================= --- Visit American Crossroads --- http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~amxroads --- Visit Backcountry Crossroads --- http://www.backcountrycrossroads.com