Cheryl Singhals <[email protected]> wrote: >> > No. "his father" is John Crow, dec'd. >> > >> > "...that I (Richard Risley) bought of John Crow dec'd... as may >> > appear by a deed from his father." >> > >> > Cheryl Singhals <[email protected]> >> >> Thank you for sharing your interpretation. It's interesting that >> four out of five people share that interpretation, because it's one >> that hadn't occurred to me before. I still don't think, based on the >> text, that it's the most plausible interpretation. Furthermore, the >> evidence shows that John Crow deeded 330 acres in East Hartford to >> Richard Risley in 1682. John Crow was the largest landowner in >> Hartford, and he died in 1686. >> http://tinyurl.com/klpcj >> So John Crow was living when he deeded land to Richard Risley. >> >> Ukes > >And thus *dead* by 1716, the date of the deed in which he was >identified as "dec'd". Absolutely. >Thus far the stated facts do not support >anything beyond a similarity of surname for the Risleys you mention. If the pronoun "his" as used in "butted north on land of Jeremiah Risley as may appear by a deed from his father" (as used in the Richard Risley - Samuel Risley deed) refers to the father of Jeremiah Risley (which I believe is a reasonable interpretation), and the land of Jeremiah Risley that is being referred to is the land that Richard Risley deeded to Jeremiah Risley three days earlier (which is compatible with the abutting property owners) then the two deeds, read together, probably provide *direct* evidence that Jeremiah Risley was the son of Richard Risley. This isn't a "slam dunk". Rather, it requires piecing information from different sources together, like pieces of a puzzle, to come to a conclusion. But it's the search for the pieces of the puzzle and the challange of attempting to put them in the correct place, that makes genealogy interesting to me. As I mentioned previously, there is strong *indirect* evidence that Jeremiah was the son of Richard. The "father of modern genealogy" Donald Lines Jacobus, in his article "The Risley Family of Connecticut", The American Genealogist, vol 25, p. 233-246 (Oct. 1949), indicated that "there there can be no doubt that the Risleys of the next generation [including Jeremiah] were children of Richard and Rebecca [(Adams) Risley]". >However, your family, your research, your conclusions. IMO, one of the greatest contributions the Internet can make to genealogy is providing a forum for sharing background information that helps put genealogical information in context. Properly interpreting the meaning of documents and knowing relevant laws, rules and customs allow us to put the information we do have in better context can (sometimes) allow us to establish family relationships that would otherwise be unrecognized. Which, I suppose, is a big part of what "genealogy methods" should be about. Jerry Ukes <[email protected]>