In a message dated 10/31/2000 8:37:05 PM Eastern Standard Time, editor-patter@juno.com writes: << I think you have hit on something. My Blankenship line goes back to Rutherford County, North Carolina, but the trail is very murky back there. The names of my family in Southern Indiana mimic the names of the Blankenship's who moved to Tennessee and were attributed to Isham. I have found land records indicating that they lived among Cherokees. Since there were no marriage records and the Cherokee women owned the land, it is a real possibility that the children were given the father's last name but they didn't stay around after the Indians were removed by treaty. The book "Southern Indians" tells of removals many years before the Trail of Tears. My own ancestor, Mary Blankenship married James Chambers in Southern Indiana in 1809. They both moved west with others from Rutherford County, NC who were known to be half-bloods. The daughter of this couple eventually moved west to Arkansas and Oklahoma and was married at Ft. Gibson (which was at the end of the Trail of Tears) in 1838 to a soldier. The record of this marriage is in his military records. It looks like she may have considered herself a Cherokee, unless she had some other reason to go out there. I doubt if I will ever find the answer to who her father was. Isham and Lodowick look like the best candidates. It is not clear which of the many possible Blankenships in the same village were her siblings and which were cousins. So many of the Blankenships on this list have mentioned Cherokee relatives, so I'm betting on it. Now, I'm beginning to feel like Thomas Jefferson's descendants by Sally Hemmens. They knew they were Thomas's but were given the brush-off until the DNA tests! Maybe we should form an off-shoot group. The "Illegitimate Offsprings" or something :-) Pat T. >> Hi Pat, I really do think that a lot of the Blankenship history was lost because of white me (the Blankenship guys) marring into the Cherokee families. I know from all of the research I have done that the Indians did not keep records like the Quakers or the Churches did. We might get back to a point in history and we all may HIT the big brick wall. As for being The "Illegitimate Offsprings" or something :-), I would have to question that and see a lot of records before I would believe that. I am finding that most of the Blankenship men did marry the ladies that lived with. And here you will notice that I did say MOST. I know some that did not and that is OK also. Sue B. Altice