This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/0V.2ADE/2120.1 Message Board Post: I have record of J. F. Navens as witness to marriage of my grandparents, Henry Arthur Mellinger and Ora Dye in Dunklin County, Mo, May 3, 1903. Henry Arthur Mellinger was born in Michigan, probably in the Niles area outside of Chicago in the 1880s. I am further intrigued by the Adams name, since Ora Dye's sister, Myrtle married Jesse Adams and I wonder if this is a coincidence or a case of families traveling together. Do you have evidence of your Navens having come to Arkansas by way of Kansas. My grandfather and his family nearly starved to death in Kansas before moving to Arkansas sometime before the1900 census, at which time Henry Arthur Mellinger lived with his brother Evan in northern Arkansas. The Dyes lived in the Strawberry, AR. area in the 1880s. The courthouse at Powhatan has tax records for the Dyes from the 1880s, but I did not research the name Navens in the record...Was your Navens a wood worker, shingle mill worker or cabinet maker? At the time of the m! arriage of Art and Ora they clamed to be residents of Campbell, Mo. I hope this information may be of use to you