[email protected] wrote: >Would like to correspond with Vances whose ancestors went to Illinois from >Pendleton County, West Virginia, and all other Vances connected with >Pendleton County, West Virginia. My Marcena / Marsena VANCE was born abt Aug. 1827 in what is now WV. By the age of 19 (1846) she was in Sangamon Co., IL marrying a middle aged widower, Alexander Reeves, who had hired her to care for his 12 children. 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. There was a William VANCE (wife Chloe) who owned a part share in a steamboat on the Sangamon River in Springfield in the 1830s. He also had a sister Polly, and a daughter Barbara Ann, named for his mother. Was he related to Marcena? Marcena's Reeves children: Rebecca, Harriet Josephine, James, Vashti, Barbara Ann, Alexander, Thomas A. , John H., and Abraham Lincoln Reeves. Marcena's children, father unknown, born after the death (abt 1864) of Mr. Reeves: Daisy, Lorena Marcella b. 1866, and Susan Reeves, b. abt 1869. She brought her 4 youngest to OR about 1875. A Thomas VANCE helped her financially when her husband died. Who was he, and how were he and William VANCE related to Marcena? And who the heck fathered those last children?