Thank you, Larry, for posting this. I think it is not just African American's who may have problems with documentation, but many of us. As families moved across the continent they were more concerned with securing the necessities of life than leaving behind the paper documentation of their existence. While today there is ample documentation of our own existence, beyond the numbers (social security, driver's license, etc.) how many of us will leave something of who we really are? The oral histories referenced below are invaluable records of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. We should be doing the same today, especially those of us who live in smaller communities. If you do not have the time to record an oral history for the elderly in your community, please consider doing one of yourself -- maybe you're not yet elderly, but the history will be important to your descendants nonetheless. Elizabeth Richardson, Ketchikan, Alaska (where we have an active group compiling oral histories -- about 75 so far) erich@ktn.net >The elderly blacks in these various counties are also a possible wealth of >information. I was intrigued to read the slave narratives for Missouri >(hosted by ancestry.com) and learn, that project was done in the 1930s as a >way of documenting Missouri's history in relation to slavery. Surely, if >someone had the foresight over 70 years ago to know what a contribution to >Missouri history that would be, I don't see why researchers are not working >on this today. >