This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Dodder, Struble, Simmons, Mann, Wertenberger, McCarty Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Zl.2ADI/161 Message Board Post: I am interested in any info on the Dodder family or the Simmons. Peter Dodder was one of the first to come to the area in 1855 with George Shobert, James Baker and Samuel Hays, according to A. T. Andreas' - 'History of Kansas'--- Peter and his daughter Elmira ran a restaurant for the Butterfield Stage Stop. Peter's home was on a the old road which ran a little north of the Old Santa Fe Trail but joined it about a mile to the west. It was called The Hill or Simmons Point. The Dodder cemetery has the graves of Peter and his wife Margaret just east of the old place. It was moved later to put the current road in. I believe it is Hwy 31. Elmira married Phillip Simmons. They had a daughter Mary Louis who married Harman Vedder Thompson. Their daughter Zoe Dentler Thompson married Charles Chesney Brant. She wrote a book on the Dodder and Thompson family about the pioneers. It was called 'The Hill or Simmons Point.'