This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Stamps Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/HlB.2ACI/2330.1.1 Message Board Post: Dear Dorman Holub, Thank you very much for this information! It is most helpful, and my family will be most grateful. Thank you also for transcribing and loading the annoucements from the Jacksboro paper. Please don't worry about whether or not it is appreciated - it most certainly is, and over time more will appreciate your work, as people will find the announcements when they are ready to search for their family roots. Around the 1950s or 1960s, my grandfather, Frank Harper Stamps, wrote the following: During my childhood and youth, I had a very strange complex. I was obsessed with the fear that I was an orphan and that I had been left on the door step of my supposed parents’ home one cold and snowy night. This fear always made me shiver, as I visualized a tiny baby left out in the cold. There seemed to be a great difference between myself and the rest of the family. My father was highly educated, having graduated from the university and the seminary. He was versed in six languages and had earned thirteen diplomas. He was teaching Greek and Hebrew in a Texas college at the time of my birth. I almost worshiped my two brothers, who were so much smarter than I. I thought they were so handsome, while I was so dull and anything but good looking. My mother was the wisest and sweetest thing in the world, and I looked up to my three sisters as if they were angels from Heaven. All of these fancies were so real to me and so exaggerated in my mind that perhaps they were responsible for my complex and fears. One day I tearfully unburdened my heart to my mother, telling her all of my fears. I said, “Mother, did you find me on your door step when I was a baby, or is it true that you are my real mother?” She was greatly surprised and hastened to assure me that my fears were groundless. However, my fears persisted, until one day fate stepped in and tore away all doubts and fears. It happened this way. I was conducting the singing for an evangelist in Seymour, Texas, and we were invited to conduct chapel services at the high school. At the close of the services, one of the teachers approached me and said, “Do you happen to be the son of Reverend J. J. Stamps who used to live in Jacksboro, Texas?” “Yes, that is correct,” I said. She said among other things, “I am the wife of Dr. Pistole, who owns a drugstore in Seymour, and I am sure my husband will be glad to see you, for we were friends of your family when you lived in Jacksboro.” I hastened down town to the City Drug Company and found the doctor and introduced myself to him. He was delighted to see me, and inquired all about the family. Then he said this. “Frank, I want to tell you something that will interest you greatly. I was a friend and neighbor of your family when you were born, and I am the very doctor that brought you into the world.” The doctor did not understand the full meaning of the tears of gratitude that welled up and overflowed as I realized the impact of what he was saying. The great burden of my life had been lifted and my fear had been conquered. Frank H. Stamps 3316 Macon Road Memphis, TN