I wrote and sent the following email yesterday to a separate mail list for one of my families. Before deleting it from my sent messages folder, I thought some Monroe CO, TN friends might like to read part of it -- especially if they have Illinois connections. It may help to explain why numerous Monroe CO, TN families migrated to Hamilton and White Counties in Illinois. Sandra Ratledge "Kinfolks in the Knobs" (sent 7/5/03) I just checked Everton's Handybook for Saline CO, IL and found it in southern IL, created in 1847 from Gallatin CO with Harrisburg as the county seat. The 1850 would have been the first census under their new name. Saline is one county away from the KY line separated by Pope CO, and Hardin COs, IL to its south. Hardin looks to be a very small county. Saline's neighbors to the north are good old Hamilton and White COs, IL that keep coming up again and again and again in Monroe County, TN folks' genealogies and especially my own. >From years of putting tiny bits and pieces together, here's what I've found. A wealthy land owner and prominent Monroe CO, TN settler Thomas Henderson acquired hundreds of acres of land in Hamilton and White Counties in IL in the mid 1800s. He lived there for a while to oversee its agricultural development. Thomas Henderson belonged to the well-known Henderson family on my Sink Presbyterian Cemetery tombstone inscriptions in Monroe CO, TN. My husband and I surveyed that cemetery and have it online at the following URL http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~snipper/kinfolks/sink.html What's important to the poor families like mine from Monroe CO, TN is that Henderson convinced many of these young men -- especially ones unmarried or newly married and needing jobs -- to move to Hamilton and White COs in order to work the land for him. He hired many of the Monroe CO, TN citizens and sent them on their way north with the wherewithal to get there. I don't think all went at the same time, took the same route, etc. He continued to recruit workers for those vast IL farms. One of his recruits was my great-grandfather and his brother in another of my lines. Many of the workers settled, bought their own land, and stayed there unlike my ancestor and his brother who returned to these familiar E TN hills. AFN, Sandra Ratledge "Kinfolks in the Knbs" "Valley River Relatives" "Appalachian Ancestors"