Elaine, Thanks for your reply. I did not realize that there was a soundex index for the 1910 federal census! I will be going to the LDS Family History Library and will check on that. I went through the 1910 census page by page for Allegany County but did not find James T. Lease or wife Mary Jane Lease. You are correct about the reason for James not having a pension - he fought for the south. But if he had lived in Virginia after the war, he probably could have gotten a pension from Virginia. But we checked at the Virginia Library when we were there last week, and they had no pension or disability records on him. They did have the same records that the National Archives has on him -- his service record -- we we have already and which did not yield much information. As for James T. Lease being buried in the Spiker Cemetery, I guess that may be possible. No one in the family remembers any Spikers being related, though. On the 1900 census our Leases were listed in District 7 in Rawlings. For 1910 we found their oldest daughter Arzella & family, but they were not with her. They had another daughter Delphia/Delcia, and I've just found out some of her marriage names, which I could check into on the 1910 soundex index. (I don't know why I keep thinking that there is no index for that year.) But I will check it out soon. I requested death certificates from Hampshire County since someone in the family remembered something about Greenspring, WV. But there were none to be found. Certain years of the Hampshire Co. deaths records were not available (missing) and we think those years may have been when the couple died. (I believe it was 1921, 22, & 23.) If so, they still should show up on the 1910 & 1920 censuses! We also checked the death registers in the Hampshire County Court House last week, and they were not there, and the same years' records were missing from the book. We also checked the Keyser Court House death registers, and did not find them, and ditto for the Maryland State Archives; we checked all the counties plus Baltimore city. I'll have to keep digging, and thanks again for your good suggestions. Kathy Lease in FL

Kathy, Just for clarification--There was a 1910 soundex for W.Va., but NOT for Md. You must have spent hours going through the 1910 Census for Allegany Co.--Cumberland alone consists of several hundred pages. Elaine