William D. (Bill) Strong was adopted as a young child and became William D. (Bill) Gracia. On 4 SEP 1998, he submitted the following query to my personal E-Mail address. I am taking the liberty of forwarding the message to the Strong Mail List. Can anyone add anything to my suggestions, which follow his message? Please reply to the Strong Mail List, where Bill will see your message, as he is a current subscriber. =============================================================== "We are looking for info on Julius Strong. The info we have is that he married a Sally Threehouse who was born in Michagan, USA and moved to upstate NY later. Julius may have been born in Canada.They had a son who was born on 10 June 1865. He was David Joseph Strong. Born in Marshall, Calhoun,MI. We do not have any dates on Julius. But have some old postcard photos of Sally Threehouse Strong taken in the early 1900. They are posted on my web site at: http://www.wdstrong.com. We have come to a dead end. The only Julius Strong I have found is the Congressman from Connecticut. But I think that he was too old and from the wrong part of the country. =============================================================== Strong, Julius Levi (1828-1872) Born in Bolton, Conn., November 8, 1828. Member of Connecticut state house of representatives, 1852; member of Connecticut state senate, 1853; U.S. Representative from Connecticut, 1869-72. Died September 7, 1872. Interment at Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Conn. - http://www.potifos.com/tpg/chrono/plyy1828.html =============================================================== JULIUS STRONG was born in , , , CANADA. [Married] SALLY THREEHOUSE, [who] was born in , _?_, MI. Children were: DAVID JOSEPH STRONG.10 Jun 1865 in MARSHALL, CALHOUN, MI." ====================END OF MESSAGE============================= ================================================================ Hi, Bill! You surely have a mystery! I see on the road atlas that Marshall, Calhoun Co., MI, is located about 10 miles east of Battle Creek, Michigan. Let's back up. How was it determined that David Joseph Strong, born 10 JUN 1865, was the son of Julius Strong and Sally Treehouse? Would you please cite the source documentation for this information in a message back to the Strong Mail List? Did you (or Jan) find a birth record for David Joseph Strong? Did this come from a family birth register, such as a Family Bible? So we know that the parents of David Joseph Strong were in Calhoun County, MI, in 1865. Were they there is 1860 or 1870? Check the indices to these two censuses of Michigan, checking all possible spellings or mis-spellings of the name Strong (Strang, Strange, Stronge, Straughn, Straughan, Strawn, Stron, etc.) to see if you can find a Strong family residing in Calhoun County or a nearby county at that time. If you find no such family in the index, the next step would be to sit down at a micorfilm reader and actually read the 1860 and 1870 census of Calhoun County, line by line, to see if you can locate your ancestors. Sometimes names were omitted from the index, or were so badly mis-transcribed in the index that they are not recognizable. Knowing the name for which you are searching makes it easier to recognize than it is for a clerk who is paid to transcribe the entire census and has no involvement is finding a particular name. Don't depend upon the indices published by Broderbund Software (Family Tree Maker) on Compact Disks, as these indices are usually only of "selected" states and counties. That is, they are not complete and unabridged. I did, however, check the 1860 census index on WFT CD #318 and found eleven (11) households headed by a person named Julius Strong. These households were located in the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, and Texas, with the largest number being in Connecticut. The name was spelled variously as Julius, Julan, Julias, or Julus. Keep in mind that some states were not included on CD #318. The State of Michigan was NOT included on this index. The index to the 1870 census, on CD, was even more inadequate. A search on the Internet Family Finder indicated there was a Julius Strong and a Julius A. Strong on the 1860 census of California, with CD #318 cited as the reference, but I could not find these names on CD #318. A Julius Strong was found in a GEDCOM at Ancestry HomeTown, but he was reported to be a son of William Hardin Strong (mentioned in a recent message to the Strong Mail List about the descendants of John Strong of Cumberland County, Kentucky). This GEDCOM was submitted by <[email protected]>. You mentioned that Sally Treehouse Strong was in photographs taken in the early 1900s. By implication, her husband was probably deceased. So I would recommend searching for Sally Strong and/or Sarah Strong on the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census. If you know where the photograph was taken you might have a clue about were Sally was residing in the early 1900s. For the 1880 and later Federal census reports, there is a soundex. That should make it much easier to search for persons named Julius Strong or Sarah ("Sally") Strong. Check for a soundex for the states of Michigan and New York, especially. The soundex code for Strong is S-365, I believe. Rev. Micheal Strong <[email protected]>, in the past a subscriber to the Strong Mail List, apparently had data about one or more persons named Julius Strong on his web pages, which I was unable to access from the Internet Family Finder search page. You might want to search the archived messages for the Strong Mail List for "Micheal and Strong" to see what has been posted by him in the past. Or just searching the archives for "Julius and Strong" might be simpler. http://newsearches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl I hope these suggestions are helpful. Following them will surely keep you busy for a good spell. Don't despair! Patience and perserverance often pays dividends. Keep searching! Be tenacious. "BoB T." Robert T. Strong, Jr. 119 Mystic Way Madison, Al 35757-8801