In a message dated 11/17/2003 2:25:04 PM US Mountain Standard Time, geo_jwt@shsu.edu writes: > Does anyone know what geographic section of the country the following > surnames might have been associated with in the 1820-1830 time frame? > There's a fantastic free website where you can research surname distribution as of 1850 (and later years). It's at <A HREF="http://www.hamrick.com/names/">http://www.hamrick.com/names/</A> I was lucky enough to find it when I had just started doing genealogy, and all I had for my maternal ancestors were the surnames Jett and Merry -- between this site, and the SSDI, I narrowed down their location to Bond County, Illinois, which happens to have a wonderful genealogy web forum.