I'd like to tell you all a research story.

My GG Grandmother passed away at the ripe old age of 105 in 1965.  Hence, she was born in 1860 in Brown County Missouri.  I knew she was married several times and outlived all her husbands.  The last one was named William Hall.  I found some records my Dad had that showed her first husband as Manual Gladfelter and her maiden name was Kenyon.  I contacted an aunt who said that her middle husband's last name was Messick.  A Great Aunt said that she had had a son who ran away from home in his early teens and was never heard from again.  So that was the start of the search for information on this remarkable woman.

First of all I did a search to find Manual Gladfelter and found The Hart Family Genealogists.  They had records starting with Emanual Gladfelter who married Emma Kenyon and had two children:  Grace Mae (My Great Grandmother) and Orbin.  They provided me  with my pedigree back to pre-revolutionary war and further back to Switzerland.  Wow!  What a find.  There is  another line to my family heritage.  There is also a Gladfelter organization.  I have found Emanual's gravestone marker.

Going through Ancestry census reports I found Emma's first census with the name of her father and mother.  From there through searching family trees, I found not only that lineage but I also found an active Kenyon group on MyFamily.com.  We've been sharing information here.  I have found Emma's parents gravestones, and grandparents gravestones in the same cemetary as the Gladfelters.  These I found through searches online.

So next, I had to find Messick.  No first name avaiable.  I did a search and found the vital records for that state of Missouri.  They actually had marriage certificates online.  I found the marriage certificate for Emma Gladfelter and William Messick.  I started searching for his census reports and found that he was about 25 years older than Emma and had children ranging in age from about 12 to 24.  He was a livestock broker.  They had a daughter who died at about 18 months.  He passed away and she had a boarding house where through census reports I found where she met her third husband William Hall and my Great Grandmother met her husband.  I also found their marriage licese in the Missouri records.

Emma and Grace both had daughters born within days of each other.  Grace's daughter was my grandmother.  Around 1900, they moved (by wagon) from Missouri to Oregon. And as they say, the rest was history.

Now let's talk about the runaway Orbin.  I found him in the 1900 census working on a farm in Missouri less than 100 miles from where his mother lived.  I then found his WWI draft record where he listed his next of kin who was his father's sister.  Interesting that he kept in touch with his deceased father's family (his father died at the ripe old age of 25, so Orbin was quite young at the time.) 

So, maybe this will give you all some hope that with diligence and persistance you too can find out more about your ancestors.

Trudy