I spent an embarrassing number of years searching Jackson County, Mo., records for my great-great-grandfather. After unsuccessfully poring through church memberships, cemetery inscriptions and census films, I did something I should have done long before: I pulled out my Missouri gazetteer and scrutinized the area surrounding the family farm in Lone Jack. There, plain to see, were the boundary lines of two other counties-both within spitting distance of the tiny town I'd spent years researching.

On my next trip to the library, I found Grandpa in less than an hour. In 1900, at the age of 77, he was living with a daughter less than 20 miles from Lone Jack, just over the line into Cass County.