I read your latest note and thought it sounded familiar - man disappears leaving wife and children ...... then your last line or so "He worked for the railroad". I had to laugh. My grandfather was a railroad man, though can't prove it, he "borrowed" other peoples names. It was easy back in the first 25 years of this century to do that - nobody had birth certificates or proof of who they were. He picked names of people he had met at one time or another. He always worked as a railroad telegrapher, which evidently at that time was a good paying and a skilled position. Our theory now is that he "might" have caused an accident on the railroad and would have been banned from ever working for a railroad again. Good luck in tracking your Gate Martin (I don't think that was one of my grandfather's aliases) Marilyn