This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Dickson Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/idB.2ACE/7 Message Board Post: Hello, I hope that someone can help me. I live in Washington, DC and will be visiting Rapid City and Cottonwood July 14-17 to do family history research. I have only been researching since February and have been limited to DC area resources such as the National Archives (census, city directories and land grant records). Therefore I am a novice when it comes to geneaology. My great-great-grandfather Charles H. Dickson owned land in Cottonwood from 1908 to 1911(?)when he was Supervisor of Indian Schools (for the Indian Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of the Interior). His son Ernest Dickson also worked for the same agency and owned land adjacent to his father's; he married a woman from South Dakota and they are listed in the 1910 Census. My grandfather (also named Charles H. Dickson) was born in Rapid City, SD in 1911. Does anyone have any advice for me for when I arrive in South Dakota regarding: a) finding the land in Cottonwood that they owned, according to the coordinates on the homestead applications; b) accessing birth/marriage/death records for the area; and c) whether there is a library which holds old copies of the "Cottonwood Republican" which seems to have been the newspaper of the time? Thanks much in advance.