I know Boone County was created in the late 1860s, and understand this might very well be grasping at straws. But ...

My paternal 2g grandfather, Solomon Melson, is shown in his obituary as having been born in Boone County - maybe MO - on 15 Dec 1815, parents James Guinn Melson and Rosanna Ballew Melson. His parents had previously lived in the area around Natchez, Mississippi Territory, and left there sometime around 1813 for Missouri, where Solomon _may_ have been born. The family, with Solomon, moved to what was then Clark County, sometime in 1816.

Fine, so far. But, since Arkansas was then a part of the Missouri Territory - it didn't become a self-governing territory until about 1819-20 - any move to Missouri could as well have been to the area that became Boone County, AR, as to Boone or Boone County, MO. Since Solomon died in the late 1880s, well after Boone County, AR, was formed, it could well be that the obituary writer took what few facts he had, added them up, and came up with a wrong answer (remember, 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2!).

With all that as background, my question is this - is there anybody reading this board who might have any information regarding the family of James Guinn Melson and Rosanna Ballew Melson, especially Solomon Melson, residing in the Boone County or predecessor area? I'll add I've found no clues anywhere I've looked in Missouri, although the Ballew/Ballou tribe was fairly prominent there in the decades before the Louisiana Purchase.

Many thanks in advance for any information anybody might be able to provide/share.

Bob Melson