My friends - To close out the week, I am going to post another in our continuing series of Skills Puzzlers. For those new subscribers to our List, I reserve Fridays of each week as a day on which I post items other than raw data - sometimes there will be an item from the "Tips" series, as well as a subseries to the Tips items, which deals with 18th and 19th century legal terminology, and on some Fridays I post these little Puzzlers in an effort to help all of us sharpen our deductive problem solving skills. Our scenario today concerns a brick wall problem in which I played a small part in helping to resolve about 10 years ago. Most of the settlers in the JP region came from the Carolinas and Virginia, as well as other parts of KY, and from TN. We do have some settlers in the JP, however, who came out from the New England area, especially in McCracken County. There were not many, but there were some who decided to move west, and some stayed in KY. The problem which presented itself was basically this: after 12 years of intensive research, a brick wall had been reached insofar as two brothers were concerned. These were Jeremiah and Jonathan Chambers. One of these men was married and was the ancestor which the researcher was seeking. Family tradition had it that there were the two brothers, one married and one a lifelong bachelor. These men lived in the 1720-1780 period in New England(the state is not important to our quest here), where most of us envy the town records which are often very helpful in these situations. In this particular case, they shed no light on the marital status of either man, which was frustrating. Nor were any other county or church based records available. Based on other material gathered over the years on each man, from what town records were extant, the following was gathered: Jeremiah Chambers: did not own land apparently, but lived within the town itself; first appeared in the town records in 1767, and last appeared in the same records in 1782. Was fined 2 lbs. for "peace disturbance" in 1772, served on 3 juries over the years, was appointed town hayward in 1774, was a complainant in an equity suit over an unpaid note in 1777, and was exempted from street duty in 1782. Jonathan Chambers: also lived in the town; no land transfer records found; appears first in the records in 1761, and disappears in 1787. In the period 1766-1776, he was the complainant in a number of suits against others who owed him money, but none of the defendants were family members. He was elected to the Town Council in 1779. He was appointed Town Crier in 1780, a largely ceremonial office by that time. In 1787, the last record found on Jonathan involved another equity suit, which was never adjudicated, probably because of Jonathan's death. The above is what we had to work with. Believe it or not, there actually are a couple of clues in the narratives above.(and remember that often we have to amass a group of clues before we can present a "weight-of-the-evidence" argument in favor of a hypothesis, since we may never find absolute "proof"). Our task is to dig out the clues - only from the material presented above - and use them as a basis for additional research into the areas which such clues may point us. If you would like to share your thoughts on this Puzzler, you can send them to the List, or to me privately. I will return with the solution before the weekend is over. As always, there will be no data posts over the weekend, but, if time permit, I will drop in to offer a file or two. -B ============================================================