Jack and Helen -- thanks for the tips. My great grandmother Margaret McAuliffe Dwyer told her children that she lived in Ausable Falls as a child. I guess she meant Ausable Forks but I can't find her or her sister Anne anywhere. They were 11 and 12 years of age in 1860 and should be on the census. Their older sister Kate is on the 1860 census living in Black Brook with her husband Patrick Hughes. Kate had a baby in 1861 or 2 who died shortly after birth and her husband died soon thereafter. My guess is that he died in the Civil War. Kate lost her mind which is probably one reason why Margaret and her other siblings decided to move away. The other reason was that Anne wished to follow her love, William Gleason, to San Francisco. William and Anne were married in SF in 1866. William was a carpenter and he built a lot of houses in San Francisco. He probably learned his trade in Black Brook. Margaret's older brother Cornelius worked at an iron mill in Peru before he moved to California. They had another brother, Richard, who may have stayed in New York. He may have died in the war, too. Their parents, Patrick and Hanorah, were living on his brother James McAuliffe's farm in Lewis, Essex County in 1860. I believe both died sometime between 1860 and 1865. Kate died in a state mental hospital in Stockton, California in 1886. Margaret must have had a good education in New York. She got a job as a primary school teacher in San Francisco shortly after moving there and she taught there (while raising ten kids!) until retiring in 1912. She married my great grandfather James O Dwyer, also a teacher, in 1869. Jerry