Hello, Janice's (farns10th@aol.com) recent postings on National Register sites including the Mt. Riga Ironworks http://archnet.uconn.edu/topical/crm/conn/chc/mountriga/index.html prompts me to post this query regarding my Mt. Riga ancestors. (I found the Mt. Riga site a year or so ago. I highly recommend it for anyone whose ancestors toiled at the Mt. Riga ironworks.) My own research focuses on the Ostrander and Surdam (Sardam, Suydam) families who lived on Mt. Riga in the 1800s. My particular interest is documenting the descendents of James Ostrander (1770-1841) who arrived on Mt. Riga sometime prior to 1830 and was the first Ostrander on Mt. Riga. I also am trying to discover James' origins. He was in Egremont, Berkshire County, MA in the 1800 census (with his wife and young daughter) but I have not found his whereabouts again until the 1830 census when he was on Mt. Riga. Later marriage, death and census records indicate James' children where born in Massachusetts between 1799 and 1821 although I have not found any birth or baptism records that confirm this. (These children are not listed in the Ostrander Family Vital Records, published 1989, extracted from NY records. And, Egremont vital records prior to 1850 or so were destroyed in a fire.) Happy to share information I have collected on James and his descendents and other families on Mt. Riga in the 1800s. Diane Gonthier dgonth@teleport.com