This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/nhB.2ACI/1192.2.1 Message Board Post: Hi Jim, I'm so excited to finally hear from someone about the North family!! My grandmother was the youngest child of John & Elizabeth North. Her name was Tennie Mae North when she married my grandfather, Wm Oscar Ball. Soon after their marriage they moved to Texas. I spent much of my childhood in their home and heard many-many stories about "all those North kids" during her chilhood...I felt like I knew them myself. And yes, she told me about how her mother hid the boys in the barn during the civil war! (I think she hid all of them). But I've no idea which side wanted to "take" them. My grandmother had many pictures of her siblings and herself in her home. As an only child I loved looking at her pictures & really felt like I knew them all. Then in 1960 their house burned an all pictures, addresses, etc. were lost. There was not even a single picture of my grandparents when they were young that survived. But I can still remember the faces of all those "young people" in her photo albums. I started doing some genealogy research in July 2001. The first thing I saw was a way to get a "marriage lookup" on the Internet and it showed John C. North married an Elizabeth "SUSTER". But I could find nothing else on any websites about this family. Finally, I wrote to the Jefferson County Archives and ask for help. They were wonderful!! The gentleman who was helping me sent a huge envelope of documents, including all the marriage bonds of the children, so I posted a similar message on all the boards for the married names of the daughters. I was just hoping the one of their descendants was also doing genealogy. This is the first reply I've gotten since I posed them about a year or two ago. Concerning how I got "LUSTER": The gentleman at the Jeff Co Archives said he looked at the original hand written copy of the marriage record and he thought Elizbeth's name was not Suster but Luster. (The records used by the "lookup site" were transcribed from the hand written record). It was just a ttypo but I spent many months looking for her in Suster records. After his correction I switched to Luster! Again, I'm so excited I can hardly wait to get any info you might be able to send or to hear from any descendant of John & Elizabeth North. My email address is: Mooretalk1@aol.com if you (or anyone) would like to communicate with me directly. Thanks again! Barb