Hello I am just newly subscribed to this list. My great-grandfather Walter Bragg Oates was supposedly born 21/Mar/1878. Now the problem that I have had is this from most of my 45 years of life have bee told by family members that he was adopted. But when I was twenty years of age an elderly relation told me that only a few family members knew a secret about him that not even my great-grandmother knew anything about. Tom Solomon the family member who told me this said that Walter Bragg was the illegitimate child of Dr. Wyatt Stephen Oates the gentleman who supposedly adopted him. No one in the family believed me when I told them this, but with in the last few months my Aunt Katherine Oates basically said the same thing. The trouble is he was supposed to have been born in Grapevine Texas. Mr. Oates told my grandmother that his maternal uncle lived in Midland City Dale County Alabama. My grandmother(mother'smother) was married to his son Walter Neil Oates. I have written my aunt Katherine told find out what documents exist to prove this. I have tried contacting the Tarrant County Courthouse, only to be told that the courthouse was burned in 1876 and all records were destroyed, so I was hoping that someone on the list was doing research on this family so they could help me. I have traced the family back to Colonial North Carolina, Virginia and England. But unless I find proof of relationship, it will not do me any good to join the SAR on James Oates (1757-1815) Revolutionary War Service Record. Thank you Jacob L. Bateman III