In a message dated 8/30/2002 10:28:23 PM Central Daylight Time, j_bunch68@yahoo.com writes: > I've been researching the ancestry of the Ladner family and have come a Paul > Victor Cox m. Armina Ladner 25 Dec 1888 in Ocean Springs, MS. Not sure if > this may help. > Hello J_Bunch68, there is a very lengthy 2 volume tome on the Ladner Odyssey written by Nap Cassibry III in 1987 for the Miss. Coast Historical & Geneaological Society. The address of the Society is P. O. Box 513, Biloxi, Mississippi 39533. You may want to write to them about Ladner questions. I don't know if they have a website or email address. The last printing of this work was in 2000. I don't know when another will be printed. It is roughly a thousand pages and might be found in a genealogical section in your library. I have some Ladner ancestors and others on the list do as well. None that you have mentioned though are any that I am familiar with. John Craven New Orleans

Lori and Barbara, thanks for your kind words. I have been hanging back because I don't know if I really belong on this list, my heritage being very cloudy. Here is a message I composed a few days ago and was kinda shy about sending: Hi - I'm new to the list, and very new to geneology. My mother's folks came from Miss, and a family rumor is that we have a Native American forebear (Indian? I'm not sure of the PC, but the Seminole here in S. Fla. use the term "Indian"). The key person seems to be of the name "Bounds." I have found some Bounds' in one of the rolls NARA has, under "Choctaw by Birth," and "C. by Marriage," and I am fairly sure that my gggrandfather was Gilliam Bounds, m to "Lizzie," no maiden name, with 4 sons, Henry, John, Wilke, and Gilliam; and 2 daughters, Sally and Elizabeth. Gilliam is not one of the first names in the NARA rolls. No definite indication of where he was born/lived. Elizabeth Bounds m. William Jefferson Smith, my ggrandfather, probably in Hancock County, Miss., so I'm hoping that is where the Bounds' lived, to keep it simple. Elizabeth died in 1924. That is every bit of information I can glean so far. I hope I will not offend anyone, but are there physical characteristics that one can use to "pin down" genetic heritage? My grandfather, James Woodard Smith, had very prominent cheekbones, straight black hair, and his son, my uncle, has often been asked if he is Native, or even of Aisian descent. On the other hand, my mother's features were more Celtic - as a child I always thought she looked like Maureen O'Hara - auburn hair, those cheekbones, and freckles. Her brother, my uncle, is dark, short of stature, and there is an old b&w photo of him taken during the Korean War that I thought at first was a Korean soldier, when I was a child. So, who knows? It is wonderful to think that I am a mixture of many different parts of the human race -- it makes one much more interesting, I think! But I'd still like to know... Thanks for any help any of you can give me. SandyM