Well, I have spent a week on this with the help of some nice people using their resources too. We are trying to tie John A. Knowlton (1801-1870) into our tree. Lorraine Moorhouse in Minnesota, without email, has asked our help. I hope that maybe her son has joined the Knowlton listserve by now as it would simplify things. Carlisle has been great in facilitating among us. Lorraine has a Bible record that says John A Knowlton was born March 10, 1801 in Providence Co, RI. Cumberland township is in this county, and that is where he said he was from when he married Eliza G. Wood, Sep 11, 1825. A listing of the marriage appears in several RI newspapers, including the Oct 4th issue of the RI AMERICAN NEWSPAPER. Dean on this list turned me onto THE VITAL RECORDS OF RHODE ISLAND by Jas N Arnold; low and behold, I realized a set was here in Georgia where I live and so I checked all 21 vols. for the marriage. After John married, he moved to Wrentham, Norfolk Co, MA, where he appears on the 1830 census and where his second child, Ann Eliza, was born in 1829. But at least two of his children were born back in RI in 1833 and 1835. I have not located the family in 1840 yet, but in 1850 Eliza and her unmarried daughters are living in one household in Walpole, Norfolk Co, MA, while her eldest, a son named Charles, and his wife and children are living in another household in the same town. Eliza was born in Walpole although at time of marriage she said she was "of Cumberland, RI." I do not know where John is. About five years later, they were off to the midwest together with four of their five children (at different times) who settled in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I want to stress that we have all the information we could ever use (gathered by Lorraine) about this family after 1850, which includes a stop in NY state and descendants of all lines. John and Eliza's children were named Charles R., Ann Eliza, Almira Phoebe, Eleanor Emeline, and Amy Ann Caroline. Eliza's parents were Jonathan Wood and Phoebe Guild. The only Knowlton family in Cumberland in the 1800-1810 period is headed by a man named Grant Knowlton. There are scarcely any Knowltons in Rhode Island before 1850 anyway, not like Massachusetts, which reeks of them. Most Knowltons either went up to Maine or directly west. Lorraine had found this Grant Knowlton on the census. In 1800 he has two boys under ten and a wife, we assume. Grant is 16-26 so born in the early part of the 1774-1784 year range. John is not born yet. We all pride ourselves on easy access to the census these days on-line. Grant did not show up on Ancestry in 1810, but fortunately I still have access to Heritage Quest on line and they could spell Knowlton. By now, he and his wife have 3 boys under ten, 2 aged 10-16, and a girl under ten. One of these could certainly be John, but I have not found a vital record yet. Cumberland is up on the MA boundary line, and indeed land shifted between the two states early on. Does anyone see any other fami! ly likely to be John's? A Grant Knowlton does appear in Stocking, but that man was born in 1753 [p 150 of the ERRATA AND ADDENDA]. He served in the Am Revolution in 1775 and returned to Wrentham by December 1775 at the latest. On Oct. 31, 1776, an Ann Blake in Wrentham gave birth to a son she named Grant Knowlton. No father was given. This person is the right age to be the head of household in Cumberland, RI, in 1800 and 1810. Blake is a common name, and there were about 20 households in Wrentham by the first census in 1790. The only possible Ann Blake I saw in Wrentham records was "Anna, d of John and _____, in Boston, Nov 29, 1747." I saw no signs of an Ann Blake being married to anyone in Wrentham or of her dying there. There are about 13 Blake households that Ann might be living in with 14 year old Grant in 1790. It seems as if vital records, newspapers, and military records have been pretty well scoured. It is time to move on to other sorts of court and estate records. There is a fine looking Wrentham Historical Society I saw on line. It covers an area called Wollomonopoag (perhaps the original name) that included Wrentham, Norfolk, Franklin, Walpole, N Attleboro, Bellingham, and many other MA townships, plus Woonsocket and Cumberland, RI. They supposedly have a marvelous database in their library, to be used only there. I have no idea whether this covers more records than we can see on line but wonder if anyone lives in Massachusetts and could take a look. I will keep poking around in published vital records for MA and RI. You understand that even if we link John to the Grant Knowltons, we are still unsure where to hang the Wrentham Knowltons onto the general tree. We have them back to Ephraim Knowlton or Nolton who was living in that township with Mary as far back as 1745 when their son Ephraim was baptized there. Carlisle has organized a dna test for the descendant Knowltons of this line in Minnesota. But we really need more Knowlton men to take the test. Apparently not many of you have. Please help us out by getting Knowlton males in your family to contact Carlisle and arrange for the dna test. Elizabeth W. Knowlton