This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Atkins, Lovell, Leslie, Caskey Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/CYB.2ACE/422 Message Board Post: I have a citizenship reference I have been trying to nail down for 20 years. Hopefully someone here can tell me if there is any help from Shelby County. My Irish g-g-grandfather Benjamin Atkins was born 2 March 1828 in Ireland, probably in County Cork, as the son of John Atkins born in England and [probably] Anne Lovell of County Cork in Ireland. He is said to have immigrated about 1849, but I've never found him in the 1850 censuses. He may have arrived in Philadelphia, as I feel he may have met his future wife, Jane Leslie (daughter of George Leslie and Margaret Caskey of Colraine, County Londonderry, Ireland) around Pittsburgh or Allentown where her sister married. Benjamin and Jane married about 1853-55, place unknown. Anyway, by 1855 he resided in Cincinnati, Hamilton County OH as shown by his listing in the 1855 city directory there with his brother Richard Lovell Atkins and probably Thomas Atkins was a brother too. I found a reference in Cincinnati's county records that Benjamin R.(?) Atkins filed for Citizenship Papers in Volume 3 number 424, but there is no such volume to be found any more, or so I was told years ago. It also made reference to a Declaration of Intention of Citizenship in the Shelby Circuit court (as I recall, but it could have been Shelbyville, though unlikely) dated 1 July 1854. For I long time I thought it meant Shelby County in Indiana where there are no such records anymore, but I wonder if it could have been Shelby County in Ohio... Any ideas or suggestions? Since I don't know where Benjamin was the first few years he was here, he could very well have been up north in the jurisdiction of the Shelby Circuit Court in Ohio... (In case my email ever changes, you can find current information in my postings on the AMANN surname board.) Mark Amanns in Cincinnati OH

Mark: Go find Miami Co., Oh . Then The county Gen. Soc. and ask Joe Bosserman.