Food for thought - We are always searching for that lost member of our family, no clues as to what happened to them. We cannot locate a will, no cemetery shows records etc. Well here is a history note that may hold some clues, something I had not considered before. If you family moved a lot or were early pioneers �always heading west� consider the number of deaths on the trail, all who died this way were left in hastily marked graves and unless someone noted in a diary or bible their deaths would go unrecorded. I had not thought about those untimely deaths during travel and did not consider the number that died. My family lines did not �go West� but they did a lot of traveling opening up several states, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Nebraska. I have been doing some historical research and found several good books the one I am reading now this is an excellent book on women pioneers I picked it up at my local library [not genealogy] it has given me a new perspective on how our families lived and traveled during the early years 1847-1869. I quote from the book �Pioneer Women� by Linda Peavy & Ursula Smith �Judging from the entries in women�s diaries of the period counting the graves became a gruesome pastime amount travelers who feared that their own families might soon face such a fate. While there are no complete records of the number of people who died in the early 1850�s, some wagons lost two-thirds of the number, and one emigrant estimated fifteen hundred to two thousand graves sites along the trail west; and there estimated five thousand. Those estimates might be low since Stanley B. Kimball has estimated that of the seventy thousand Latter-day Saints who mad the overland journey in wagons and handcarts between 1847 and the completion of the railroad in 1869 at least six thousand died along the trail from exhaustion, exposure, disease, and lack of food.� Barbara in Katy TX ===== ALEXANDER,ALMON,BLANCBURN,BOWLES,BROKAW,CLIFTON,COLCORD,CONRAD/COONROD,HALL,HAMMON[D],KIGHTLEY,PLUMMER,PRATHER,RILEY The majority of my research is in the following states: MD,DE,NJ,VA,OH,IL,KY,IN,NB [before 1900] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/