I left off last night with Daniel's son Thomas of Cornwall, Orange Co, NY, and his family who disappeared after the 1830 census. When I had the clue that he had a son named Prosper Knowlton and I googled, imagine my surprise to find our own Berta Dempster's list of Knowltons on several NYC directories posted to this list and now archived by rootsweb. I realized that I had ordered each city directory over a 60-year period and copied all Knowltons plus other family names. I got out my folder and found several years of Prosper Knowlton having an oysterhouse on Laurens St near the corner of Spring or on Spring itself. Since I once lived on Sullivan St in NYC between Spring and Prince, I knew Spring. But where was Laurens? After a lot of google false leads, I found the NY city necrology page of dead streets and discovered it had become West Broadway. This was two and a half blocks from my old apartment! and 130 years later. Now I want to know exactly what an oysterhouse was. I know there was a craze for eating oysters then and what an oysterhouse is now, but could Prosper in his 20s have afforded such a place. He worked there at least from 1833-1837. I jump ahead. Of course I began to search for Prosper in the censuses. A great name for searching, right? In 1850 he was living in Hackensack, NJ, being a quarryman, worth $5000, together with his wife and three children: Martin, Caroline E., and Louisa. They were all born in NY except for the two little girls, so I could tell they had moved to NJ before 1846. Prosper was 38. In 1860 they were living in Danbury, Ottawa Co, Ohio! Prosper was 49 with same wife, Miriam, 42. Again there were three children: William M., CE, and LM. He was a tenant farmer worth $100. Hmm, could this have been the "moved west" part of the story. Eventually I realized that William M. and Martin were two different boys. I still have not found Martin in 1860. By 1870 a lot had happened. The Civil War. Prosper had died somewhere. Miriam, 50, and William, 27, were back east, in Norwalk, CT. With them was living Elisha Mott, Miriam's father, I eventually figured out, a retired merchant, 77. William was working as an oysterman. Farther down the page, boarding with a sea captain's family, was Martin, 34, and Loretta, 30, Knowlton. Martin was an oysterman too. Using the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses, I was able to track this family in Fairfield Co., CT. There was enough information on line to discover that Louisa married Charles Millspaugh and Caroline married first Theodore Mills and then Andrew J. Raymond, 61 in 1880, who kept a fish market. But it was Elisha Mott, their grandfather, who enabled me to backtrack and dig up some of Prosper's siblings. More to follow. Elizabeth W. Knowlton