I don't believe this one is on the list, but if anyone can help him it would be good. I know some of you have Hodges lines in IL, and from IN. Elijah From: "Kurt Pickering" <KPICKERING@tnema.org> To: thetishbite@juno.com Subject: Emery Charles Hodges My mother was born a Hodges; she, a late child born about 15 years after her parents (Raymond Leslie and Grace Gladys [Kantner] Hodges thought they had stopped having children, never knew her grandfather except by name: Emery Charles "EC" Hodges. She does remember his wife, born Ella Mae Evans and some 12 years her husband's junior. Ella Mae died when my mother was about 15. All Mom knew about EC was that he was "from Illinois," lived to be 75, was a sometime inventor who held some patents that proved of little value, and had married the daughter of his very wealthy employer. And this nugget: that he came over from Europe as a two-year-old boy, lost both of his parents on the voyage, and was adopted or at least raised by friends of his parents who'd been on the same voyage. I started by doing the math from EC and Ella Mae's vital dates, arriving at the idea that EC was born about 1855 and died in 1930. Sure enough, I found his death record in Joliet, IL, in that year. Then I corralled the couple in censuses of 1900 and 1910; oddly, and briefly frustratingly, there were two men of that name in that time frame in that state - except that my great-great grandfather showed up in both as "Emory" even as the other man spelled it the way my mother and his death record says my ancestor did. If it weren't for the names of their other family members, I would probably have gone off onto a wild line chase. But Ella Mae told me which was the right EC - and both census records indicate he was born in August of 1854 in Indiana. Is the story of the Atlantic crossing a family myth? Or a fact assigned to the wrong ancestor - could it have been EC's father or grandfather? Or did the person speaking to the enumerators not want to tell "the government" that EC was an immigrant? My mother's one surviving sister does not remember the story, but my mother is quite firm in remembering their mother speak of it. She also points out that she spent much more one-on-one time with her mother than did my aunt, who was one of three sisters born in three years RL and Grace were raising at once. This impasse has existed for nearly a year now, lying on the back burner as I concentrate on the two other great mysteries. But imagine how my ears perked up when I saw that your line includes someone born in Ripley, Indiana! Shot in the dark: does Emery Charles Hodges happen to appear in that line? Thanks for your input ... Kurt Pickering kpickering@tnema.org --------- End forwarded message ---------- ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]