Researching the family surname of Padgett is not an easy task. I had done some research on my father's side with great ease. Seems they are a long line of famous people who Universities collected much information on them. My mother's side is another story. The Padgett's settled in Greene County Indiana in the early 1800. They were people who were uneducated and most of them could not read or write. So far I have found no attempt from any family member to record family events. There to the best of my knowledge is no family bible full of much needed information. So I did the only thing I could do, I hit the census. My problem occurred in searching for a James Padgett and his wife Mag (Margaret). The harder I looked there was no such name as a James and Margaret Padgett with the names of kids. James and Margaret are my great great grandparents. One day while searching the census a lady listing to my story of woe looked over my shoulder as I pointed out to her my great grandfather. She pointed out to me that there was a Sarah Padgett who was a widow living next door to John Padgett my great grandfather. With this information tucked under my arm I proceeded to the family reunion. Asking the question if Sarah could be Mag? They were all ready to tell me that I was wrong. She must have been an Aunt or someone else. Meg was Meg and that was all there was to it. My problem was I did not know how to do this. I was readingRrootsWeb when I came across one of the lessons that talked about searching in newspapers. I decided that I was going to hit the newspaper archives. I did not have Meg's date of death but I knew from the census that ten years later Sarah was no longer living next door to John. I wanted to know who Sarah was. Figuring that Sarah was in her eighties I decided she would not have lived much longer. I started when the genealogy library opened and stayed there all day only stopping to use the bathroom and eat a sandwich I had packed. An hour before they closed I found an obituary. The obituary said, "Sarah Margaret Padgett died". The obituary gave the name of the person who was officiating and the information of the funeral. The paper is only published once a week. I then went to the next week and looked for any information I could find. I found a second article called Deaths Harvest. It said, "Margaret (Meg) Padgett died". It was a very long article that listed her husband's name James Padgett and all of her children including John Padgett. I had done it! I proved that Meg was Sarah. I had proved this three months before the next family reunion. There were no disputes this time. Researching is long and hard but its times like this that make it all worth the work.