I do hope this site is the appropriate one for this type of mystery. In 1912, my grandfather, William Alfred Holt, left his wife, Amy Wood Rives Holt, and two small children. At the time they were in Jackson Co. Texas near Palacios, Matagorda Co., Texas. Amy then moved in with her father, George Mason Rives who, I believe, lived in Palacios. In the divorce in 1916, she says she was forced to take in sewing to survive. They had all moved from Montgomery, Alabama in 1910 where William Alfred's family had been prominent. He had a sister that kept in touch with the family over the years but apparantly she never knew what happened to him. Family legend says he went into the Army, was wounded in WWI and died in a VA hospital in Phoenix, Arizona about 1927-29. What I know of him is this: they had just moved from Rolling Fork, Mississippi where my father was born in 1909. William had relatives in Galveston, Texas, one of whom was City/County Engineer, the other, a lawyer. His oldest ! sister, of whom nothing is known, was born in New Orleans where their parents were married in 1876. His maternal grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Franklin Brantley, were from Vernon, Jackson Parish Louisiana. What I suspect is this: Somehow, Amy angered Will about something. Family history says she was a Daddy's girl and didn't want to leave her father. Maybe will had found another job and wanted to take his family with him but she wouldn't leave. In any event, she waited four years to divorce him and remarry. I think that means she was partly to blame but she would never tell anyone what happened. Will may have been a Jack London type and wanted to see the world. But he was 32 at the time and had been married six years with two small boys. Why did his sister not know anything about him? Where did he go? This has been a mystery that my father and his brother tried to get their mother to talk about for 50 years and she died with it. Now, they are both dead without ever answering these questions. If someone ever runs across the name, William Alfred Holt (Will), please let me know. I fear he may be totally lost to history. I would like to at least know where he was buried. Did he ! remarry? It's sad to think his two boys would not have cared about why he left if they could have just known him. Bob Holt [email protected]