My MILLIGANs arrived in Gentry Co. between 1844 and 1848s. My FRIENDs were there by 1854, but I can't determine exactly when they arrived. As I've posted before, I'm always eager to find anyone else researching these families and do have quite a bit of information to share. Today, however, I'm looking for allied families. Although my FRIENDs & MILLIGANs wound up in Oklahoma, they were in Gentry Co. long enough to have made many friends and to marry into other Gentry Co. families. The question remains: how many such families moved from Gentry Co. to our part of Oklahoma? When the Unassigned Lands were opened in 1889, T.C. FRIEND, his sons William & Charles, and son-in-law Willard SWEAT homesteaded near the eastern border, close to the Iowa and Kickapoo Lands. When the Iowa Lands were opened in 1891, T.C.'s son-in-law Andrew Francis MILLIGAN homesteaded there. On a modern map, this boundary runs north/south through Logan and Oklahoma Counties, six miles west of the Lincoln Co. line. I've gathered information about all of the successful homesteaders of these two townships, and in many cases I have been able to find them on the 1900 census and thus determine the states from which they came. I've also spotted a number of families who came from MO and bought farms from the original homesteaders. Often, this meant that they had found that a place was for sale from friends or family already in the area. The catch is that I can rarely determine which part of MO a family came from. If your family moved to this part of Oklahoma, PLEASE write. There's a good chance our families are linked in some way. If you know only that your Gentry Co. relatives moved to Oklahoma during the land rush days, but not where, I'll be glad to check my records. Sharon McAllister smcbox@cs.com