This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: HARMON, STEPP, WELLS Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/AKB.2ACI/861.862.872.1.1.1 Message Board Post: It was my grandmother, Millie Stepp Simpson, who told me years ago that her mother, Amanda, was a Harmon from Mississippi and that they were of German descent. The only Amanda Harmon I have ever found who was the right age to be my g-grandmother and who lived in Mississippi was the daughter of Matthew S. Harmon of Lafayette Co. My g-grandmother, Amanda M. Harmon, aged 25, was in Lee Co., MS in 1880 married to John W. Wells. Wells died in the mid 1880's and Amanda married R.F. Step(p) in Union Co., MS in 1888. They were still in Union Co. in 1900 where it shows she had 4 living children out of 4 total children: the son by Wells b. 1883, and three by Stepp b 1891, 1893, 1897. They all moved to Van Zandt Co., TX by 1910. On that census, Amanda had only 2 surviving children out of 7 total, my grandmother, Millie, and my g-Uncle Arnold who died childless in the 1940's. Amanda died about 1912. Amanda's son John Wells had married her step-daughter, Emma Stepp, in Union Co., MS in 1901. Emma Stepp Wells, widowed with three children, was living with Amanda and R.F. Stepp in in VZ Co., TX in 1910. It bothers me that I can't account for the twenty year gap in Amanda's whereabouts between the 1860 census in Matthew Harmon's household and the 1880 census. On the 1910 census it shows that the marriage to R.F. Stepp was her second marriage, his third, which matches what I have on them. If she married John Wells much before 1880, it seems they would have had children sooner than 1883. Since she would only have been 15 or 16 by the 1870 census, and was presumably still single, I was surprised she wasn't still in her parents household. If you ever stumble across a record of her that would help fill the gap, please let me know. Ellen