Published abstracts of wills for Green County were checked first; none was recorded for a Richard Strader. In case the abstractor had missed Richard, I went to the original records and indexes. No, Richard hadn't left a will that was recorded. The next step was to look at the census records to see if this Richard was even the right age to be Mary's father. The 1850 Green County census (the first census to list everyone in the household by name) enumerated several Strader households. Of the heads of families, only Richard was old enough to be her father; he was sixty-one. Of course, there is the possibility that Richard was an uncle, but what was particularly noteworthy were the names of Richard's wife and the children in his household: His wife was Martha, and the children were named Dorinda (age twenty-five), Martha (age twenty-three) and Thomas (age twenty-one). Mary and Jesse Curry named children Martha and Dorinda. Though Jesse and Mary were married in 1839 there was no enumeration for them in the 1840 census in Green County, Kentucky, where Jesse might have been listed as a head of a household. Let's take the census back one decade earlier when Mary would have been in Richard's household: Richard STrader males: 1 aged under 5; 2 aged 5-10; 1 aged 15-20; 1 aged 40-50 females: 2 under 5; 2 aged 5-10; 2 aged 15-20; 1 aged 40-50 Calculating from the 1850 through 1870 censuses, Mary would have been born between 1817 and 1819, making her between the ages of eleven and thirteenth in 1830. Without knowing the month she was born, she might fit in the five to ten year old category being ten years old but not yet turning eleven. Based on the 1850 census listing for Richard's household, his child Dorinda would have been five in 1830, Martha age three and Thomas, one. The other members of the household are unknown, but Richard and his wife were likely the ones age forty to fifty, which corresponded to their ages in the 1850 schedule ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com