Many, many years ago, when I first began genealogy work on the Mallory Family line, the only sources I had to start with were the things my grandmother, Leona Mallory Poor, told me and some letters from her brother, Houston Lee Mallory. Neither of them knew much beyond the names of their grandparents and the stories their father, Benjamin Franklin Mallory, told (which were often embellished). Later, I had the family history written by June Mallory Ferguson, which was an enormous help, and letters from other Mallory researchers in Missouri and elsewhere. But, prior to that, all I had were a few names and locations. This was before records had been scanned to computers, and everything was in book form or on reels of microfilm. Records had to be searched by location first, then by name in the source itself. It was time-consuming and often fruitless. I started with the names I knew and checked the U.S. Census for the years before the Civil War....
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