Thank you, thank you, thank you, Darrel! ~Karima >From theSouthern.com: "Historians or students curious about life in Cairo 150 years ago - or families trying to trace an ancestor - can thank Darrel Dexter for shedding new light (and a bit of heat) on those days by making available thousands of stories from newspapers of the day. "Dexter, a rural Jonesboro resident who is a history teacher, genealogist and author, has read every surviving issue of Cairo newspapers published between 1841 and 1873, and transcribed nearly 5,000 obituaries and hundreds of other articles. "Some of the articles talk about mundane matters, but others paint a vivid picture of what Dexter calls "a wild river town." There were gunfights in the streets, legendary houses of prostitution, labor disputes, Civil War news and tales of sheer orneriness. "All the articles now are posted on the Internet to be used by researchers at no charge, on the website of the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois. "Ed O'Day of Carbondale, the GSSI webmaster, calls Dexter "a tireless worker who keeps plugging away at those obituaries." Dexter is a former student of O'Day at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He holds a master's degree from Southeast Missouri State University and has published 28 books on history and genealogy." Read the rest of the article at: http://www.thesouthern com/news/local/article_8caca7e0-26ae-11e0-a9be-001cc4c002e0.html