Given the additional information you posted, your line *should* be: 5. (Benjamin) Franklin Brooks, who's new to me 4. Uri/Eri Brooks, b. Hadley?, MA, 8 Jul 1759 + Hannah SIKES, m. 29 Mar 1783, Wilbraham, MA 3. Joseph Brooks (b. 1714) + Miriam WRIGHT (b. 1732) 2. Joseph Brooks (1667-1743) + Lydia/3 WARNER 1. William Brooks (d. 1688) + Mary/2 BURT All the persons above lived in various Massachusetts towns along the Connecticut River valley. This is the Springfield Brooks line. Normally I could point you to the Tributaries web site for the first two to four generations, but this line isn't up there yet as it's the subject of a research project that's getting nearer to publication each day. A basic source text, well done and quite accurate as far as it goes, is "William Brooks of Springfield, Mass., and Some of His Descendants," by Joel T. Eno, in the NEHGS Register (1918), 72:142-147. If you don't have access to a decent genealogical library, I can mail you page copies. One finds the name Uri commingled with Uriah, both in this line in general and in local records. Since many early "misspellings" are actually just phonetic renderings of how names were pronounced in 17th-century English, it would appear Uriah was pronounced -er-eye-ah rather than ewe-ryah. If this hypothesis is correct, then Eri (or Eriah) could be variant spellings of the same given name (er-eye-ah, again, rather than ee-reye-ah). Your Uri/Eri was the second so named in this household (a necronym), as the first was born in 1749 and died 25 Aug 1758. The father Joseph, a trader or storekeeper, lived at Deerfield, Northfield, Hadley, and Northampton, MA. I carefully wrote in the first line of this message, "*should* be," because, in about 10 years' searching to date, I've never previously seen evidence of Uri/Eri going to Louisiana. (He simply disappears from Massachusetts records after marriage.) It's encouraging that he can be documented (birth, marriage) in Massachusetts, that he married Hannah, and that an Uri/Eri who married a Hannah can later be documented in Louisiana � but it seems to be that the burden of proof would be on you and your new source(s) to establish that these two sightings represent the same man. Like so many identity questions in genealogy, this would seem to come down to sources. Is there some affirmative evidence (family bible, or probate, for example) other than simply the coincidence of the same name in two different regions of the country? While such an extreme migration would explain why the Massachusetts man disappears from records there after marriage, in the absence of evidence, it would be more likely that he would go to VT or NY, a common migration pattern from CT and western MA. If the Massachusetts and Louisiana men can be demonstrated to be the same, I'd be happy to do an offlist file swap with you � Uri's ancestry for his later line. And if, in the course of your research, you come across living direct male descendants surnamed Brooks tracing their ancestry to Joseph/2 of the Springfield line, I'd be eager to contact them concerning DNA testing. Chris |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Christopher Brooks BROOKS Families of New England http://www.tributaries.org ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||