Joyce T. Barnett of the Mississippi Adoption Registry has made a special request for the new year that will benefit all family history researchers throughout the state.

Ms. Barnett requests that anyone with school yearbooks or city directories that are no longer needed please consider donating these volumes to the Archives. These are wonderful sources for research and can hold the keys to solving all sorts of brick-wall problems in genealogy.

Books may be mailed to the Mississippi Department of Archives & History at P.O. Box 571, Jackson, MS 39205 or dropped off at that facility. Ms. Barnett will also accept volumes at 617 North Harbor Drive, Brandon, MS 39047.

Keep this in mind as you start your spring cleaning and remember that you may be able to give the gift of an actual picture of a long lost relative to someone out there!

Ms. Barnett also sent an update on her work with the Mississippi Adoption Registry which has completed its first full year in operation. They now have over 200 people registered and have had 14 reunions with only one rejection this year.

Some of their reunions included a biological mother and son who met after being separated 66 years by adoption; a reunion of nine brothers and sisters; a birth-mother who met her twin daughters after a 26 year separation; and one reunion just because both a mother and daughter registered.

The Registry currently has the names of fifty-seven birth mothers for whom their children are searching and nine birth-mothers and some fathers who want to find children who were put up for adoption.

The Registry has done a great job of helping make these family connections with great respect to the privacy of everyone involved. If you were born or adopted in Mississippi and are interested in seeking help, contact Joyce Barnett at 601-8299-3078 or email her at

Joycetbarnett@aol.com

for further information.

DOES ANYONE KNOW …

… Linda Mora ( Goshen, IN, email:

LMora1153@aol.com

) is looking for information on her great grandfather, JOHN THOMAS STAFFORD, who was born 15 August 1879. He and his brother, Charles/Charlie, were placed in an orphanage by 1877-1879. His mother and sister died of malaria and their father died a few months later. John was later adopted by a doctor that lived near Saltillo, Mississippi, and later lived with a family named WADE. He married Sarah BLAYLOCK in 1899-1900 in Lee County, MS. John died in Lee County in 1934. He and Sarah are both buried at Old Union Cemetery near Belden. Does any reader have information on Mr. Stafford?

… Tommy Giles (Wetumpka, AL, email:

dtgilesjr@aol.com

.) is looking for information on his great great grandparents, THOMAS JEFFERSON HUGHES and his wife MARY ANN GAGE, daughter of John “Old John” Gage (1762-1840) and wife Martha (Patsy) JOHNSON (1791-1851). He has been told that Thomas Jefferson Hughes was a member of the State Senate from the Louisville area. Can anyone help with that information? He was also called Colonel Hughes and is thought to be the son of Captain Richard Hughes from Union County, South Carolina. Thomas and Mary Ann had seven children, one of which was his great grandmother, Nannie Gage Hughes, who married Benjamin Franklin GILES in Louisville, Mississippi on 15 November 1860. Can any reader help with this group?

Please send your announcements and queries to FAMILY TREES at 900 Main Street, Natchez, MS 39120 or email to

Famtree316@aol.com

. All queries are printed free of charge. We look forward to hearing from you!