Lydia, I also should tell you that my mother's telling of the story of the wagon train, is that M.A. (or, as one archivist told me - this could also be M.H., due to the writing of the census-taker - M. Hodnett Robertson?) was already a widow when she & the boys exited the wagon train. The reason being that their wagon broke down & since they did not have a man with them to fix it, the train put them out at the nearest town - Johnson City. Mother's mind was clear until her death, but apparently the story was remembered differently by various Hodnetts. I do know that Ben was very secretive about his life before coming to Blount County, and though Lillie "begged" him to take her to visit his Mullins stepfamily in Mississippi, he never did so. It's possible that his story about Frank was vague for a reason. Or because he was very young when his mother married Mr. Mullins, he may not have known many details.