I've done a turn with my family history and found a lot of gaps in it. My mother's side seemed to have jumped out at me while I was looking for my father's side. I happened to find some nice people via the web who had already done the searching with real paper, so I took their word for a lot of my ancestors. The ones closest to the last century interested me the most. My mother had shown me her grandfather's (Ulysses Simpson Grant Roberts) and her great grandfather's (she "knew" him ad Mifflin, which is apparently how my grandfather referred to him, but he was buried as Dallas - further digging found his name to be George Mifflin Dallas Roberts) gravesites when we went to pay our respects at the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. Intrigued by the lack of stories about my ancestors, I picked George, or Mifflin, as Mom refers to him, as a starting point. I found out that the John T. Roberts and Esther Durnil Roberts buried near him were his grandparents. I found census data from 1850 and found his mother to be one their daughters - Harriett Roberts. She had no "husband of record" and no death date of record either. She was not in the 1860 census and George was listed as raised by his grandparents by someone from the family who posted online. So I started to write what I imagined his life to be like from the start and since I have no publisher lined up, I'll put it online as I go along. I wrote by years, beginning in 1844, with George's birth and the , to us, mystery of his name. I'm only up to 1860 so far, so maybe publishing online will give me the nudge I need to go on....So beginning tomorrow - George Mifflin Dallas Roberts - A Small Town Boy.