Brandi, I, too, am searching for Vances in Sangamon Co., IL. My Marcena (Marsina, etc) Vance married widower Alexander Reeves in Sangamon Co., IL in 1846. She was 18 and he was 54 with12 motherless children. She had 9 more children by him and another 3 children after he died about 1864, father unknown. Marcena was born Aug 1827 (approx) in what is now WV. She told her grandchildren that her father was a river-boat captain on the Ohio River and she had an Aunt Polly who had long red hair. That is all we know about her family. When her husband died in 1864 her farm in Fancy Creek Twp (just north of Springfield) was sold at a Sheriff's Sale to a Thomas Vance for $200 and he sold it back to her. We don't know what relationship he had to her. In the 1830s there was a William Vance (wife Chloe) in Springfield who was part owner of a river boat line on the Sangamon River. He had a sister Mary (Polly) who married an Eli Paine Hardin. Could this be the right family? Marcena named her children Rebecca, Harriet Josephine, James, Vashti, Barbara Ann, Alexander , Thomas A., John H., Abraham Lincoln, Daisy, Lorena Marcella, and Susannah Reeves. The last four, with their mother, ended up in Oregon and Washington in the 1870s. We assume she followed other family members here, but we don't know who. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? We would appreciate even the smallest feedback. Thanks, Carole in Portland