Just when I thought I had my Cherokee Co. lines down pat, a cousin goes digging through an old trunk, and I discover I've got Suttons!! Seems my elusive gg-grandmother's parents were Solomon and Rebecca Sutton Messe, and now I gotta prove it. Here's how the line goes, according to the papers found by my cousin. Solomon Messer & Rachel ? > Solomon Messer & Rebecca Sutton > Mary Lucinda Messer & Joseph Anderson Kimsey > Agnew Courtney Kimsey & Elizabeth Ella Abernathy > etc. Here's the problem. Solomon Messer's first wife is listed in most Messer research as Rosannah McMahan. However, he didn't marry her until he was 30 years old. I think that my aunts are right, and that Solomon Messer had a wife (Rebecca Sutton) who died young, and had at least one child by that wife -- Mary Lucinda. Why do I think the "Aunt Queenies", as my cousin calls them, are right? Because: 1) Their research on other lines is almost dead-on. They've missed a couple of dates by a few years, but everything else in the other lines has checked out. I think this will, too. 2) They knew their grandmother, Mary Lucinda, so they were in a position to hear first-hand who her parents were. 3) Four of Solomon Messer's siblings married Suttons -- be sorta natural for him to do the same. 4) Solomon's age -- a first marriage at 30 years old was highly unusual in the 1840-50s. 5) On the 1860 census, Mary lists her birthplace as "Jackson Co. NC" Since she was b. in 1836, that's not possible. However, Solomon and many of his siblings lived and died in what became Jackson Co. in 1851 -- I think Mary was merely using the new county name. I have been unable to trace Mary Lucinda further back that 1852, where she first appears as a live-in maid in the James Whitaker household. She doesn't appear in any Messer household on the1850 censuses for Cherokee, Clay, Haywood, or Macon counties. I'm now checking Sutton households on the theory that if Mary's mother died when she was young, she might possibly have been taken in by family on the maternal side. There are Suttons on the 1850 Cherokee Co. census. Of course, I'd love to hear from anyone who has information on these Suttons and Messers. It's been a long haul to get a breakthrough on Mary Lucinda's parents. Any help in proving it will be most appreciated. Judy