Having poured cold water on Debbie Allen's ancestral theory, I am dismayed that I am unable to offer an alternative candidate. I've been through all my Elis, merged a pair who upon inspection were the same man, and I'm left with four Elis, three of whom have well-documented marriages and longstanding residence in one place, and then the Eli who married Naomi Wilson. I'm sorry I couldn't do better, Debbie. You might visit that Northeast Kingdom newspaper site whose URL I gave in my last posting � perhaps she has added more news items since I visited. I will check HeritageQuest for (with luck) a history of Orleans County, but that part of VT (extreme northeast) is sparsely populated, and I wouldn't expect to find much on it in print. Perhaps Jim Brooks could check Ancestry.com for Eli Brooks in 1840 (Lyndon or Barton?) and 1850 (same)? The census I have access to is not indexed for the years 1830-1850. Chris