Hello: Hello Horatio: Hello Bob and Jane: THANKS. I am new to this gadget, and internet, as you can well tell. I have searched long and hard, the old fashioned way, without results. I know that many persons left the "south" after the Civil War, and sometimes in droves, with whole families and friends together. With the marriage records of Cocke Co Tenn being destroyed, it wiped away all of the gals possible marriages before leaving. The one son, Leander Merit Russell has eluded my search, and the only other son, William, came up to Indiana in winter of 1865/6. He never had any contact again with any of the family, as far as any "history" or "story" known. And he was a tight lipped, closed mouthed, individual, who could not read nor write when he came here at age 16. He died in 1913, 10 years before I was born. The only part said, and believed, was that his mother Matilda (Cross) Russell had died in the winter of 1865/6, before he left. With his father dead (1859), and his mother now dead, and three "old Maid" sisters left at home to boss him, he had nothing to stay there for. But what happened to all four sister, and the brother, bugs me to no end. Again Thanks. Regards Dick