Sorry for any trouble you had accessing the page with the wills etc.: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/topic/afro-amer/indexusg.html Start there.. .and scroll down. The wills posted are from white slaveowning families that note the distribution, sale, gift, mortgage or auction of a slave upon their death. The whole purpose of posting the wills is that it may help someone who has a general idea of who owned their family. And if you have some names in general that you can follow.. you may find them in these wills and probate records. The whole deal about last names is a gamble. The first time African Americans were enumerated was in 1870.. and many are still living with or near their former owners... and on that particular census -- they may be enumerated with the surname of their former owners. However, by 1880 -- it's a whole new ballgame... and unless you know of some oral history about your particular family about your last name -- you have to follow the pattern of families who owned your ancestors to figure it out. Wills and probate or circuit records can tell an entire story of transactions about slaves in the family. Sometimes there are letters -- like the ones I recently obtained on the TUTT family's slaves that give some insight as to WHO the slaves in the family were. But it is very small. You don't get any data on the black people really .. other than if they were good or bad slaves.. or who they should be sold or rented to etc. But these letters are important.. because there are mentions of children and other family ties that could lead to another state where they could have been sent, sold or rented.... I'll give you an example of how confusing the surname deal is: My great great grandmother Mary Ann was owned by Jacob Chism in Morgan Co., MO. http://www.missouri-slave-data.org/jchism.jpg When he died -- his will noted that Mary Ann should be given to his daughter Elizabeth Chism who married Lot Howard. In 1865 Mary Ann Howard married Samuel McClanahan, and on the 1870 census of Morgan Co., she is listed with the surname of ROSS living next door to a Black CHISM family. Mary Ann and her son Marion were enumerated with the surname of ROSS in 1870 -- Marion was 6 years old.. and the head of the household was also named MARION with the surname of ROSS.. but in 1880 my Marion took the surname of WILSON and is no longer with his mother & siblings and Marion Ross is enumerated with a new family altogether. Turns out through a little research I figured out that Mary Ann took the surname of Elizabeth Chism's husband Lot Howard. When Jacob Chism's oldest daughter Margaret Chism Letchworth's husband died -- Jacob was charged with renting out his son in law's slaves. One was named Samuel McClanahan. Elizabeth's youngest sister married a McClanahan and the ROSS family intermarried into the CHISM clan. What am I saying is that I could see that these folks were all part of the same circle with the WHITE family.. meaning the surnames names had a familiar or similar pattern. Marion Wilson's death certificate noted that his mother was named Mary Ann Howard and that he was born in Morgan Co... and he died in Cooper. His father was supposedly named William Wilson. In reviewing the plat map of owners of Morgan CO -- I saw that a WILSON farm was not far from the HOWARD farm. Robert A. Wilson in fact. It is likely that Marion's father lived on that WILSON farm... although I have no way of knowing just why the WILSON name was chosen. In my research I learned that Morgan was formed from Cooper Co... so I was looking in right place. Marion Wilson in 1880 was working as a servant for Edwin Patterson who ran Nathaniel Leonard's shorhorn cattle farm in Bunceton. Supposedly Marion had a sister was a slave on Ravenswood and her name was Millie Wilson... Last year while visiting in Bunceton I met Black woman named Ada Simms who works for cemetery records historian Helen Mitzel a zillion questions and I mean a zillion questions. She remembers several people in my family and knew Marion Wilson. She said that Millie Wilson was her half auntie? How's that for confusing. I asked her about my last name and she said: "Girl, Wilson is not your last name -- they just took that name." I can not tell you how unhappy and confused that I was. The deal is that most black marriages and relationships were not recognized so through oral history some people were told who was the child of who.. and who took whose name etc. This part of black research is also troubling because there are many secrets about whose child is whose. There is the issue of biracial folks.. who the white folks don't want to accept and folks who have children by folks that they want to deny for a plethora of reasons... most likely for emotional reasons that could go on and on. See? It's a circus trying to figure it all out. Well, I'll take the time to explain more later. traci wilson-kleekamp