This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Burns, Dixon, O'Neal Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/kg.2ADI/1507.1 Message Board Post: Hi Heather, Perhaps this will be a helpful lead. In researching my O'Neal's, I found in the 1883 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY (Missouri) that James O'Neal, James and Arthur Burns arrived in 1809 from Kentucky. If you did not know, Pike Co MO and Pike Co IL are across the river from each other. Their historys are closely linked because most of the early settlers to Pike Co., IL stopped in Pike Co., MO first. The reason for this was slavery. Illinois was a free state and most southerns migrated to Missouri first. To continue with the Burns, it says that James Burns had been in the area as early as 1800. In 1802, his brother-in-law Frederick Dixon, a celebrated hunter and Indian trader, applied and received a grant of 680 acres from the Governor of Upper Louisiana. Apparently James Burns did not become a permanent settler in the region until 1809 when he brought his family and his brothers in from Kentucky. By the way, my James O'Neal lost his wife, all nine children and a foster child (orphan) in an Indian massacre about 1812. However, other of his kinsman arrived from Kentucky to Pike Co., MO, to Pike Co., IL. Good hunting, Judy