Hi List, In respones to the recent challenge regarding solving roadblocks: My father's mother, Caroline Avis STONE was born in Orange, CT in the house built by her paternal grandfather, Dennis Beach STONE. It is now the headquarters for the Orange Historical Society and they call it the Stone-Otis House. It was quite easy to trace Dennis back to John STONE of Guilford, CT who helped build the famous "Old Stone House" there. However Dennis's spouse (also my ancestor) Sarah SHELTON wasn't so easy. There were six (6) Sarah SHELTONs who could be the one. All of them had more than one thing wrong in their vital records. (1) I posted a query in the "Nutmegger." (2) It seemed obvious that she would be descended from Daniel SHELTON of Stratford, CT. (3) Donald Lines Jacobus gave me the tip (in one of his books) to trace the entire family if you can't prove a specific individual. I spent considerable years tracing all the descendants of Daniel Shelton. In the meantime I was collecting quite a cache of material about STONEs & SHELTONs in CT. Every vital record date pertaining to Sarah SHELTON is disputable but her identity was positively made through the tragic deaths of her two nieces visiting during the 1859 diphtheria epidemic in Orange. The Orange town records indicate that 14 young people aged 2 to 36 died, including two children of Dennis and Sarah STONE; and two of D. B. STONE¹s 15 year old nieces (actually Sarah¹s nieces) from Monroe. They were: Miss Nancy SHELTON, died 18 March 1859 and Miss Elizabeth BEARDSLEY, died 8 April 1859. I had found all this information but hadn't figured it out yet. A helpful reader of "Nutmegger" queries pointed me in the right direction. Further research showed that Isaiah and Sally Betsey (LEWIS) SHELTON had a son, Lewis; a daughter, Nancy who married Abner BEARDSLEY; and a daughter, Sarah Ann (who therefore is the one who married Dennis Beach STONE). Q.E.D. While trying to identify every HULL in CT the process of elimination quite often determines identity because there's only one left. I know hereditary societies won't accept this as proofbut logic (and rocket science) does. Regards, Bob Hull -- Robert Hull <saratogabob@earthlink.net> Try my website: http://hometown.aol.com/saratogab/myhomepage/heritage.html