This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Roper Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kgDBAEB/706.2 Message Board Post: It occurs to me that it bears mention that since Freeman ROPER is the ONLY ROPER in the Samuel WILLIAMS household in 1910, it generally follows that he most likely has no YOUNGER sisters or brothers, or if he does, they are either dead or, in the case of a sister, already married. Given that Freeman is age 19, I would speculate that AT MOST he might have one surviving younger sister who is married, but even this seems unlikely. Given the regularity that children appeared in those days, I would take the absence of other younger siblings to mean that Freeman ROPER's FATHER probably died within one to three years of his birth. Moreover, if Freeman has an OLDER BROTHER, by age 19 I suspect that he would probably choose to live and work with that brother rather than with his stepfather (particularly if BOTH parents were dead). I believe that we can reasonably infer that Freeman probably had no surviving older brothers and probably had no older sister either. In short, it is probably most likely that Freeman ROPER was an ONLY CHILD, or had at most one or two sisters very close to himself in age. Again, given the regularity with which children appeared in those days, I would say that it is most likely that Freeman ROPER's father and mother married no more than one to three years prior to his birth and that his father died within one to three years after his birth. So we are looking for a ROPER couple residing somewhere near McCurtin County, OK, possibly in Arkansas, who married sometime about 1898-1900, with the ROPER father passing away by 1901-1904. * Another corrolary of these circumstances is that it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that there is going to be another ROPER who is personally acquainted with this family's situation in 2004. There aren't likely to be others descended from the ROPER we seek and the family was intact only long enough to produce Freeman ROPER!