About 10 years ago, I attempted to resolve the conflicting information on the death date of my ancestor Israel Knapp of Philipstown, Dutchess County New York, the husband of Mary Henion. My solution was neat, logical, e-mailed to every Knapp researcher I knew -- and, I now believe, dead wrong. This is my attempt to correct whatever misinformation I may have spread. Then, as now, there were three competing death dates to chose from: --1769 at age 62, from a transcript of the bible of his son David Knapp --1789 at age 62, from A.A. Knapp's "Nicholas Knapp Genealogy." --1795-97, based on published abstracts of his will (the period between when it was written and proved). Clearly, two of these dates had to be wrong, and the transcript of the bible record was the first to fall. Israel's children were born between 1771 and 1785; barring the presence of a very skilled medium, he did not die in 1769. I next reasoned that A.A. Knapp had realized the same thing and assumed that 1769 was a typo or transcription error for 1789. So far, my reasoning was sound. But my next leaps of logic turned out to be stumbles. A.A. Knapp made many mistakes in my line. I was not and am not inclined to trust his work. Multiple abstracts give the date of Israel's will as Aug 1, 1795. Therefore, A.A. Knapp must have been wrong, and the 1769 in the bible transcript must be a transposed 1796 -- which fits perfectly between the date the will was written and the date it was proved. The problem? A.A. Knapp got it right and the transcripts of the will got it wrong. A researcher who inspected Israel's original will reports that the date in the first line is a numeral and is hard to read. At the end, however, the date is spelled out: "the first day of August one thousand seven hundred and EIGHTY five" (emphasis mine). Assuming this information is correct, it brings us back to Israel dying in 1789, which fits well, as it turns out, with the 1790 census. A Mary Knapp is listed in Philipstown, with the right number of kids to be his widow -- and she's right near Gilbert Weeks, whose daughter married Israel's son. Israel's will was probated after her death in 1797. The revision of Israel's death date also changes his supposed birth date. Based on the 1796 death date, I subtracted 62 and got 1733/34. Based on the new date, 1789, that should be 1726/1727. -Jim Miller