When I discovered I had a Smith branch in my Woodside line, my first thought was 'Oh no, how will I ever find any information'. All I had was one name, no place of birth, no parents or siblings names - nothing to distinquish my Rose Ann Smith from any other Rose Ann Smith. But wait, she did have a middle name of Lyons; how many Rose Ann Lyons Smiths could there be?

Also, I knew my grandfather was born in Illinois, so that was where I started looking. I found the 1880 U.S. Census entry listing my grandfather with his parents and brother, living in Perry County, Illinois. Rose A. was shown as being born in Illinois, so now I knew where to look. I sent for and received a copy of William and Rose's marriage certificate, but it gave no additional information. All my searching was done before the wonderful age of doing genealogy research on the computer. Everything seemed to take so-o-o-o long.

To make a long story short, in the mid 1990s I saw a query on one of the Woodside message boards and wrote to the person who listed the query. Then I forgot about it. He apparently forwarded the letter on, because a couple of years later I received a letter from Illinois. The writer turned out to be a new-found cousin who had a connection to the Smith line. We were both so excited to find each other and share information. She not only helped me take the Smith line all the way back to Ireland, but she provided information on the Lyons line.