This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/BGB.2ACI/492.1 Message Board Post: Hi Linda, I just found my family resently, so I know a little about doing this. Your father did leave a paper trail. You just have to know how to find it and then be willing to follow it up. First, I take it that you already have a copy of his application for a Social Security card which gave you your grandparents names and your father's birth date. If your father is dead, you should be able to get his birth cert. from PA. Go to the USGenWeb for PA and Detroit, MI and find the local Geneology Group there and also the address of the local library also the court house. Wrtie to the library there and ask them to make a copy of the page or pages of the city directory and phone book for the Hodges that were living there in 1956 or the closest year that they have. Also do some math and figure out what year you dad would have been in Jr or High School in Detroit and ask if someone is willing to look in the year books to see if he was attending school there, and they may have a! picture. This might take some extra time, so you might ask for a volunteer to do this, if possible. You have some nice pictures too, but one of them is so dark you can't see the people. Have someone scan it for you and lighten it up so you can see the people better. Also crop the pictures so you can get a nice closeup of their faces. Someone out there knows some of these people. Now you have to be able to get those pictures in front of the public so someone will reconize them and contact you. You can write to the local geneology group and ask if it is possible to print their pictures in their local newsletter or magazine along with your story. You can do this for both Detroit and PA. You can also check with the local newspapers in those areas to see if they have put in a special section once in a while for pictures. Our paper does and people usually use it for congraduating seniors, 50 wedding anv. annoicements and things like that, but you could use if to post t! hose great pictures you have, with a caption like, If you know these p eople, please contact family member ect. You've proply seen them saying "lordy, lordy, look whose 40. It's just another way to get those pictures out infront of people. Check to see if you dad was ever in jail in MI. The information is at the state achieves and on the web, I believe you have to go to Google and put in Michigan Corrections. I can check if that is wrong. If your grandparents were living in Detroit in 1956 they may have died there. Check the Social Security Death index for those names. You can also ask the library in Detroit if they have a resent death index. If you can find them, then you can get their death certificates, obituaries and just maybe some other information of the other family members. Those are really nice pictures that you have, I left a picture once in the library just on a table with some information on it along with my address. The librarian read it and called me up, another person had just been to the library researching that very ! family and they had left their address. Small world sometimes or maybe we are just getting some extra help now and then. Good luck on your search. You may or may not be able to find them, but at least you will be able to say that you gave it a good try. Carole Alden daughter of Robert Virgil Alden of Vandercook Lake, Jackson Co., MI and Donna Baker.