Hello from France. Please allow me to introduce myself: my name is Patrice Louinet, and I live in France. Some of you have probably received e-mails from me in the past few days, and a member, Frank Martin, suggested I try this list. (Thanks, Frank!). I am not related to any Martin family that I know of, but am in fact researching American author Robert E. Howard's (1906-1936) ancestry. Information on Howard's maternal line is scanty, to say the least. His mother was a Ervin, and in a short autobiographical essay and a Family Bible, are found the following notes about some Martin ancestors. George Washington Ervin was born in 1830, in a plantation near Raleigh, NC. In the early 1840ies, he "crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains, drifted on through Tennessee, turned south and in 1842 settled near Iuka, in Tishomingo County, Mississipi.... About 1848, Dr. Thomas Martin, of Maury County, Tennessee, and a member of an old pioneer family, moved to Tishomingo County, and in 1849 G.W. Ervin married his daughter, Sarah Jane. That same year, her brothers, Joseph and Benjamin Franklin Martin, went to California in the gold rush." I know that one of the brothers never reached California, and died on the road. Don't know which one, nor where. Sarah Jane Martin died June 2, 1874 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She married George Washington Ervin on July 20, 1849. Sarah Jane Martin had ten children in all. Any help concerning these particular Martins would be greatly appeciated. Thanks, Patrice Louinet