Tom: Like everyone, my ancestry involves many lines. One of mine is the Davenport/Danforth family of Quakers who came from England to New Jersey, migrated to New York and then on to far southern Indiana. I've been corresponding, by snail mail, with a delightful elderly Indianan who share a big piece of my ancestry. If I may, I will quote one part of an enclosure (it was written in 1987) to a letter I got from her this spring (she's always had trouble with punctuation; I'll try to quote with care): Henrietta Danforth married John Kilgore in Henderson County Ky Jan 26, 1834. Divorced in Warrick County IN August 1836. Married secondly to Karr Briscoe in Warrick County Indiana Oct 20, 1836. [I abridged here] Karr and Henrietta had a daughter Minerva Estrus Briscoe who married a Canadian ....Cornell. They had a large family raised near Newburgh Indiana but my (Uncle Arch Rhoades 1900-1985) said he had no knowledge of any "kin" named Cornell so I suppose that just didn't get Handed down in the family. --------- I have copies of both of Henrietta's marriage records and the divorce record, too, but absolutely nothing on the Cornells. Still since I had just reread this file last night and your note came through this evening, I can't help wandering if there may be a connection. I'm sorry she lists no first name for the Canadian Cornell. Duncan Morrow -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Cornell <[email protected]> To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, August 27, 1998 9:13 PM Subject: Re: [KNAPP-L] Unconnected Knapp's Pat, I have one page which was copied from the not all that great copy at the Allen Co. Public Library in Ft. Wayne, IN. That is the only place I've ever seen one. The page describes my Samuel Knapp and family and probably derives from his will and probate. How nice it would have been if the Knapp researchers had said so, but at least they did include him. You know Fred Knapp is around and probably has one, but the problem may be having the names in an actual data base or index so one can look them up. If the "Unconnected Knapps" book is strictly what I saw, it would not surprise me if there were very few originals and maybe only one which was then propagated by copies and copies of copies. I don't know how much Fred and the other family researchers have been able to put in a computer, but that seems like what we really need is a data base of known and unknown Knapps. I created one of these for my Cornells in Canada, and it was invaluable is figuring out my unknowns. My object was to find the children of my Cornell ancestor, and I had no idea where they were. So, I went meticulously through the census, cemetery records, etc. Gradually, I've been able to assemble whole families and then connect them together. I also had lots of great help, too. Somewhere I heard that Fred had records on around 100,000 Knapps, and that is orders of magnitude more than I had to contend with -- maybe 5,000 at most. Probably something this big would require an expensive professional data base program, lots of learning time to use it, and a big high speed computer. One way to pare it down would be to confine it to persons born before 1900, maybe even 1850. Many of us could probably afford a little time to enter data to accomplish this if we had the source material and some guidance as to format. For my Cornells, I use: name -- ID code -- born -- died -- father -- his ID code -- spouse -- page no of history Wherever possible, I estimate birthdates if they are unknown. If the children are listed in the right order and I later get dates, I find I'm usually not off too much. Even an error of 20 years gets you in the right ballpark. Doing one of these for the Knapp Genealogy would be the place to start. It's index is already pretty good and could be expanded upon. Wonder what exists already. Tom Cornell