This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: BATIE, WILDMAN, TYLER, RANKIN Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/XJB.2ACE/493.4.1 Message Board Post: Thank you for your response. The Rankins I am looking for were described in this letter. If anyone knows where Badger WI is located, I would appreciate it. Here is the letter and our mystery girl: Let us start with the Baties, taking my mother's mother's people first. She was born Lettitia Wildman & her mother's name was Rankin, but I know no more about her mother only that she had a sister who was separated for her husband or was a widow, & she left her little daughter, Eliza, in Wisconsin (Badger near Prairie duChien) with the Wildmans while she went to California to find work. She must have stayed several years, & this daughter, Eliza, grew up with Lettitia (my Grandma Batie), each knowing that one of them was "just a cousin"--they were about the same age--, & the parents, the Wildmans, wouldn't tell them which one was the cousin. When the two girls, Lettitia & Eliza, were about twelve years old, Eliza's mother returned for her daughter, but the lasting affection between the two girls for each other is noted by the fact that each named a daughter for the other, Lettitia Cornish Schiller & Aunt Eliza Neal. I don't know how many were in the Wildman family, but Lettit! ia, my grandmother, had a sister, Margaret Hawks--hence our connection with the Hawks family. Lettitia married Thomas Batie, a Canadian from London, Ontario, Canada. He was born in 1835. His parents were Adam & Mary Robson Batie, natives of Scotland. In 1851, Thomas & Mary moved to Grant County, Wisconsin with their twelve children. Thomas Batie was married to Lettitian Wildman in Wisconsin, & they came to Iowa in 1873. They came to Coon Valley Township, Sac County & settled only a short distance from Lettita's sister, Margaret Hawks.