I was interested in your message because my family also has a Robards/Dean connection. The family migrated to Missouri through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, possibly Ky at some time. My father was Henry Eugene Robards (b. 1902), and his brother was John Dean Robards (born 1911). Family names through blood or marriage, that I can remember, include: Grim (I remember an uncle Ezra Grim), Seward, Foncannon, Culp. Othere given names were Samuel and William. My grandfather, Jesse Robards, was a veternarian. He was married to Harriet Phigenia Foncannon. Later, Jesse Robards, headed up the hoof and mouth disease program in Texas. My father and his brother were born either in Kirksville or Thayer, MO, and I know some of the ancestors lived in Hannibal, Mo. I know that my father's immediate family branch had no girls born into that branch from about 1830-1930. They always told my sister and me that we were the first girls born into that immediate branch of the Robards family in over 1! 00 years. Evidently. they didn't have the usual large families or surely they would eventually have had some female children. I know that they were kin to the badly portrayed Lewis Robards (married to Rachael Donalson who later married Andrew Jackson).I have many old photographs, and tintypes, taken at studios in Logan, Ohio and Terra Haute Indiana, as well as some from Iowa. Some branch of the Foncannon family were in the Dakota Territory, many photos from there also, most of the pictures seem to have been taken in the middle to late 1800s (my guess by dress etc.). The tintypes probably date back to the middle 1800s.If you can connect with any of this information, I would love to hear from you and share whate I have.