Hi Mark, I have been reading your posts about Adeline Carson over the years with great interest. I started writing a novel about her two years ago (or so, I'm slow) and I'm amazed how much more info has become available in that time. I assume that by now you have located the (potential) son of Adeline and George Stilts. In any case, the George Stilts who lived and died in Boise (having moved there from Florence, ID now another gold rush ghost town) had a son named George Stilts, Jr. Junior died at 18 of diptheria (two weeks before his younger step-sister) and per his obituary "the poor lad had been afflicted from an early age and could only move by the aid of crutches" which certainly makes it sound like he had had a traumatic birth. George married Ellen Finnessy in Boise on Oct 5, 1865, at which point he was the single father of George Jr and she was the single mother of Josephine who was born in 1864 (in her obituary, Josephine was specifically described as George Sr's step-daughter which argues against the notion that George and Ellen had a shotgun wedding.) When our George Stilts died in 1894, his obit mentions he has no heirs to mourn him. Ellen had predeceased him by a few years. All of this info was gleaned from really wonderful old newspaper articles in the Boise newspapers. Because George Stilts was a major character in the town, there was a great deal of copy on him. Of course, his rather fanciful obituary includes such "facts" as his having trapped and camped with Kit Carson. Interestingly, there is no mention of Carson's daughter.