It sounds like you are describing the "place" called Nelson that is located at the crossroads of Route 20 and the Erieville Road in Madison County. Erieville is a similar "place" a little less than 5 miles south at the junction of Erieville and Eaton Brook Roads. Both of these are named places, they could be crossroads, hamlets, neighborhoods, post offices, etc. Neither of these places are towns, however. This is an important distinction when it comes to doing genealogy in New York State. These named places commonly appear on road maps because they are identifiable points, whether or not there is actually anybody there or not. Towns define a unit of area smaller than a county and normally do not appear on road maps. Both places, Nelson and Erieville, as well as other named places such as Pughs Corners, Bucks Corners and Hughes Corners, are all located within the bounds of the Town of Nelson which covers a rectangular area approximately 6 x 7 miles in area. The Town of Nelson is an incorporated place (as are all towns in New York, as well as cities and villages) and therefore has a town clerk and likely courts and other offices that generate and (hopefully) keep records that would be of interest to genealogists. Chris Andrle ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 5:16 PM Subject: Regarding Nelson, NY > Past messages have described where this place is > > It consists of a few building, a farm machine dealer being the main one. It > used to have a restaurant that may or may not still be there. It is a large > enough town to actually have a hamlet (an even smaller town) called > Erieville a few miles south of it. > That used to be a rather nice little town but it is even smaller than it once > was. > I know it fairly well > > Bob Coomber > Rochester, NY > > > ==== GEN-NYS Mailing List ==== > Have you seen the GEN-NYS-L mailing list archives? > http://archiver.rootsweb.com/GEN-NYS-L/ > >