This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: WILSON WILLSON HILL BROWN SACKET SACKETT SHOEMAKER SCHOONMAKER Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/QFB.2ACE/575 Message Board Post: I believe there are other Michiganders related to the VT bunch that migrated to MI in the mid-1800s that kept up the double-L into the 20th century. Although, I've found that enumerators and headstone-carvers sometimes economized, heh. Sometime apparently shortly after 1850 this group was in Barry County MI: father Ezra, Prussian wife Anna H (HAHN? HAYDEN?). Sons Ezra, Amos, Lotan. Daughters Seba/Sebba and Anna who married a MILLER but was living at home with 2 MILLER children Ernist and Alma, 2 households at 1880 Yankee Springs. Amos is married with Etta and has child George L. There is an Elizabeth WILLSON in the county poorhouse who's a peer to father Ezra, whoever she may be. The 1894 MI census has them also, Ezra has married Amy, has children Claud and Armina. Amos has more children: Jennie Maud William Lena Sarah Edward, to a total of 7 including eldest George. That least kid is Edward Amos WILSON, grandpa in diapers. Ezra #1 there, b. ~1830, consistently shows he and parents were born in VT. I just found docs online a few days back so have no paper docs yet to study for NewClues. However, I looked over VT pretty well on my 1880 census disks to see that most VT-born WILLSONS (there aren't that many W. households left in VT at that time, what with migrations to NY, MI, &c) and the elders of those that do remain seem to have come from MA. All that said, in MI there is an 81 year old Seth WILLSON b. 1799ish VT, both parents b. VT. This Seth is living with a MERRELL family in the town of Iosco, Livingston County MI. The wife there is Adealia, 37 (7 years older than Ezra. She's born VT to a VT dad, NY mother, I suspect Seth may be her father although he shows as "other". At any rate I went to speculating that they could be family, that A's mother was possible wife #2. Two doors down is the only other WILLSON, a generation younger , Alford b. MI, father VT, mother PA. You can see where my curiosity goes here -- he's about the oldest living VT-born WILLSON on the 1880 census. One older lives in NY, a widow survives in VT. Seth may well be my Ezra's father or uncle. There is at least one other early line of WILSON quite nearby, across what's today's Allegan County line, enumerated on the 1850 census and later shown as Boughton WILSON b. NY. Perusing BOUGHTONs shows they may have come to NY via VT. So. Some way or 'nother these WILSON and WILLSON may have common VT roots. An interesting but untidy detail is that the one-L is going by two-LL in the 20th century and us two-L's are now using one-L. Can any of you out there clue me to connections back to VT and earlier? *notes. Will b ~ 1885 married Flora UNKN, only one child, dtr Majel. He went to farming and livestock raising up at Ingham County; I think he'd left Yankee Springs for Grand Rapids around 1910-ish. Brother Edward Amos would have also gone to G.R. because that's where he married g'ma Violet May HILL 1914. I know nothing of any of the others. Yet.