I am wishing contact with any JAMES researchers who might have had family in the area of Vandalia, Missouri in between 1874 and 1885. Our mystery Grandfather Harry JAMES had a photo of his mother (in 1885 circs dress). She was either a JAMES or married to a JAMES. The photo has a stamp on the back from a photographer from Vandalia, Missouri by F. B. Carver's Studio. We have looked for links for over 5 years for Harry JAMES family. He left home at age nine when his mother re-married; he didn't get along with the step-dad. There was a younger sister who taught him how to read before he left home and with whom he managed to maintain some type of contact. He had a mystery visitor around the circa of 1910 in the middle of the night.........could have been anyone from a cousin to an acquaintance; would never give out what it was about. He arrived in Wallace, Idaho and Burke gold fields with a railroad job as a brakeman and ended up being yardmaster during the fire of 1910 that burned half of Wallace to the ground. He retired as a pumpman at the Hecla Gold Mine but did a few years as a deputy sheriff for Shoshone County, Idaho in the 1920's. He died in 1960. Please, can someone tell us if there were any JAMES families in the Vandalia area about this time? Other names in the mystery background are BIRDSELL, ANGELO, MOURNING, HERRON which have been associated by marriages from the family census grouping of 1850 thru 1880.............this group is made up from the notes garnered from surviving cousins and from photos which have been just identified as BIRDSELL/WILLIAMS links in Cook County and from Morgan County, Illinois, circa 1930's and 1940's which were also in possession of Harry James. Thank you in advance, Linda and Tom Thank Kettle Falls, Washington State lthank@turboisp.com