Thanks, Todd. I'll add a link to something Larry Stevens compiled about the 39th OVI to the resources page on the site. I think you could be right about people coming to Kansas after the Civil War, but in my Butler Co families, more people moved to Kansas in the 1840s and '50s. (Except for me, who moved here in 1971....) Kansas became a state in 1861 from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Free State debate inspired many Butler Countians to pour into Kansas to make a political statement and vote their consciences. Did the vets of the Civil War get land in the west like the vets of the Revolutionary War and of the War of 1812 did? There were health problems in Ohio - typhoid fever for one - that may have encouraged people to move west. I've recently been reading about the effect TB had on several people in southwest Missouri (right across the Missouri River from Kansas). Some moved to Montana and others moved to Colorado to recover, but neither extended their lives much, apparently. Another branch of the family moved to Wisconsin (!!!) to get away from a particularly bad Missouri winter. You've got to be right about the importance of the railroads, and that "Go west, young man, go west!" invitation having big influence. Nancy In a message dated 2/2/2006 10:06:48 AM Central Standard Time, todsutton@yahoo.com writes: Nancy: I know the 39th OVI formed in Cincinatti was dispatched to the now-KC area and western Missouri in the Civil War. My GGGrandfather was with the unit. I have often wondered if that exposure led some in later years to come to this part of the country perhaps from stories their fathers told. Of course, the other aspect was the opening of railroads and general western expansion. There was a newspaper blurb about another relative reporting several deaths in the Kansas winter and then the newspaper editorialized something to the effect that "and still the land agents paper us with flyers". I think there was a definite marketing campaign that drew many easterners to the golden plains.