My great grandfather, WALTER PHOENIX was born in Sheffield in 1850, son of John and Mary Ann BENSON Phoenix. He married Sarah Ann REANEY, daughter of William and Sarah MOORE Reaney. The came to the US in 1852 and originally settled in Canastota, NY because of the silver trade there. Three years later they moved to Meriden, and then Hartford, CT where they stayed and the family still all resides in the general area. Three and a half years ago, my Mom's sister died and all her belongings were moved to my Mom's house. Almost 3 years ago, my Dad died and in cleaning out a lot of stuff, my mom came across a lot of old family stuff--a feast for me! LOL One day, she handed me a little notebook, like a daily dairy that would fit in a man's shirt pocket, with the comment "This probably is just junk but I thought you should take a look at it since you get mad if I throw out anything without checking with you!" I almost fell off the chair when I looked at it because it was a diary of Walter's 6 month trip to Sheffield in, I believe, 1921. I couldn't figure out why he would leave his family for so long and then realized his wife had died in 1917 so he apparently took his youngest son and went "home" for awhile. This is an incredible account of who he saw, where he went, what he bought and even how much he paid for things. The daily weather is even recorded, including that of the trip over and back on the ship. It gave us a wonderful picture of both the ship life and relatives in Sheffield at that time. The writing is very small and crammed into the little book. I photocopied it, enlarging each page for clarity. I then shared it with a relative in CA that I had met online a few years before. We had joined in a collaborative effort, where she did a lot of the documentation work and I contributed hundreds of old family photos, newspaper clippings, and thing like the diary. We really got this family pretty well traced back thru many generations, with lots of material to "flesh them out" as well as the lineage itself. . One day she sent me a typewritten copy of the diary with a legend of the the people involved and we were able to connect most of them and put them in the right family group. One thing about the PHOENIX family is that they were all musicians, some professional and many amateurs but performing was a major part of their lives. When Walter went back to Sheffield, he mentioned playing in various places then too. One or two played with John Philip Sousa's band. MY Mom even handed over an old music book, where Walter had hand written music. I wonder if anyone has ever come across the PHOENIX name as musicians in their research. This unexpected find became an important part of our research and gave us a much better look at the family both here and in Sheffield. Barb Stevens