Howdy! A good place on which to post information you have about Bell County ancestors is on the collection of boards for Bell County. There are boards for biographies, obituaries, wills, Bible records, pensions, deeds, and queries. You can go either through the Bell County Genealogy and History web site to get to them, or through the Bell County Resources page at http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/TX/Bell/. The only board, however, on which questions/queries about ancestors can be placed is on the Query Board. (I delete queries on other boards, per RootsWeb and GenConnect guidelines.) It can be a good idea to post queries on both the TXBELL list AND on the Bell County Query Board, as not all interested Bell County researchers are TXBELL subscribers, or are Query Board responders. You're welcome to join the TXBELL list and either participate, or just monitor. We've got about 85 subscribers (plus or minus a couple) and it's interesting to see who has what information about whom, and see people sharing what they know. Bill Bost TXBELL Listowner Bell County (RootsWeb) Genealogy/History page webmaster Acting webmaster, West Bell County Genealogical Society Acting webmaster, East Bell County Genealogical Society Acting webmaster, Bell County Historical Commission RootsWeb Sponsor Closet shelf installer (at least this weekend, for my daughter!) ----Original Message Follows---- From: Rue_Lynn_Allen@bakerbotts.com To: txbell-l@rootsweb.com Subject: {not a subscriber} Allen Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 13:16:52 -0700 (PDT) Hi, I'm still a bit of a novice with such things as family and county mailing lists on internet but here goes. The Allens came to Bell County, Texas (along with several others) in 1851 from Tennessee. They were Sarah Allen (widowed) along with her three children: John Quincy Allen b. 1825, Pennsylvania - 4 children Benjamin Franklin Allen b. 1836, S. Carolina - 3 children and Ann Elizabeth Allen (Bingham) b. 1833, Tennessee - 11 children Benjamin Franklin Allen, my ancestor, must have lost his wife (Sarah Elizabeth Hollis Allen) early in their marriage. They were married 7/25/1855 in Coryell County, had their first child, Ibby E. in 1856, their second, John Wylie (m g-grandfather) in 1857 and their last Mary Ellen (Mollie) Allen Dillard in 1859. Benjamin Franklin Allen, presumably a widower, left his three children with his sister, joined Company D with the 18th Regiment Texas Volunteer Cavalry in the fall of 1861 and mustered in on 1/20/1862. His regiment wound up in the Battle of Arkansas Post which was a part of the overall Vicksburg Campaign, he was captured on 1/11/1863) and taken on a barge of some description up the Mississippi to Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illnois and died there as a prisoner on 3/5/1863 of pneumonia. His three children grew up quickly. My g-grandfather, John Wylie Allen was a true Texas cowboy, working in the panhandle on the S-Bar-L ranch and on some of the cattle drives up to Kansas. His wife, Lela Dillard Allen lived in a dugout for awhile and raised nine children in the area. I have lots more information, including prisoner of war rolls, probate records, real property records, copies of early Bell County newspapers from the late 1850's showing their cattle brands, some delightful interviews of my great-grandmother and would be happy to share. If there are any common ancestors to anyone else on the list - please e-mail me at rallen@bakerbotts.com or to the list address which I presume is okay (someone let me know if not). I don't have a home computer and use the one at work where we fortunately have internet access -- it looks like there are some venues for posting information - am I correct? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com