Dear Listers, Colleagues and Cousins: I will be signing off for a while starting next week and regret missing the strands and clues that pop up periodically. I want to wish all of you Happy Holidays and hope you all get new computers, memory, scanners etc from Santy Claus or whomever. I wish to state the pieces of info that I have sought just because I think we all have such mysteries and periodically, we should re-visit them in case there are new subscribers or data sources. These issues have been hanging for several years for me, but many more for other family researchers. This information is what prevents me from being a "proven" descendant despite a lot of circumstantial evidence, the beliefs and assertions in other gedcoms and databases which indicate the line I believe to be true. Parenthetically, I have mused on the fact that some of my ancestors don't actually exist as far as "professional genealogy" is concerned; they are names in a Bible or letter only... But I do know it is worth the mental discipline and effort to "prove it" whenever possible and leave a record of substance for the ages. In that spirit, I seek the following information: ï A document that cites how (what ship, what route) George Corlies came to be in Shrewsbury, New Jersey in 1680; a ship record, a Certificate of Removal from a different MM. He said he was born in Dublin in 1654, but no one has even found how or when he got here, even though he was surrounded by fairly famous other Quakers whose families he married into as well as his sons and daughters (Shattuck, Lippincott, Hance, Allen, Brindley, West etc). How does someone as well known and respected as him (he was an elder at the Shrewsbury MM and was mentioned in that context in Abigail Lippincotts will) get there without notice? ï A marriage record of Abiah Corlies (born ca 1746, from Burlington but moved to Old Monmouth Cty area later, by 1793) to Sarah Soper of Soper's Landing, Barnegat, Old Monmouth. The date of marriage would probably be about 1781 or 2 as son Joel was born in 1783. I strongly suspect that the Rev War or even War of 1812 may be responsible for loss of records pertaining to him, see below. ï A death record, death place and burial site for Abiah Corlies. According to Farnsworth researchers, he died either in 1812 or 1814 and because the one piece of information always says that his sons "Joel and Joseph removed to Ohio," I believe that he died either in Old Monmouth (Barnegat, Sopers Landing or Warren Grove (then called Corliestown or Corlies Sawmill) or possibly over in Burlington, near the Red Lion Tavern (between Medford and Vincentown), which his father William Corlies Jr. had owned before going broke. Some have suggested that Abiah might have died pioneering over to Penn or Ohio.... ï A birth record for my GGGGpa Wright Soper Curless (Corlies, Corlis, etc). He was born January 1802 in New Jersey, in those same places as elderly presumed father Abiah would have been. Much circumstantial evidence points that he was a younger brother of Joel and Joseph, to the point that I believe it as fact (contact me privately if you are interested in the circumstantial evidence). Similarly, birth records for Rhoda Curless (Corlies), sometime between 1803-1810 and possibly a Job Curless (Corlies) in those same years are needed. For over a hundred years, family researchers have sought some of these answers, because they are not in the normal records that we rely upon daily. I have added a few because the old-timers didn;t leave what they knew to be commonplace info and like all of you, I am trying to rebuild that record. Anyway, thanks for your time, interest and many wonderful pieces of information we have exchanged and shared this year. Happy New Year-before-Real-Millenium-New Year! Sincerely, Lance Beeson