My friends - A short message today to say that we have reached 94 of our needed 100 or more individuals expressing an interest in holding the 2nd Jackson Purchase genealogical conference in Paducah in the summer. We are close, and tomorrow is the tentative last day to send an expression of interest. I will have a tentative final numbers report for the lists on the 11th. Here is a little bit of trivia that I came upon recently, which is interesting. The question is: when did the last surviving widow of a Revolutionary War veteran die? Most of us would probably think it would have been, at the latest, toward the end of the 19th century. However, Esther Summer, wife of Noah Damon, died in 1906 - the last surviving such widow. She was 21 when she married Noah - he was 75. She was born in 1814, and he in 1760. She was about 92 when she died in 1906. There is currently a project in progress to try to locate as many very early photographs of surviving RW veterans, and their wives/widows, as possible. Photography first came to America in 1839-1840, but was not widespread until into the 1850's, except in some of the larger cities. It should be interesting to see how many of the faces of these venerable founding veterans can be located. -B ====================================================================