Looking for information on the Abel Thorington who is listed on the 1840 census of Preble. Does he connect to the Able Thorington who is listed on the 1800 census of Chenango Co., and, if so, how. Vicki

Forwarding this in case someone is interested. Vicki -----Original Message----- From: unlimitd1@juno.com [SMTP:unlimitd1@juno.com] Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2001 5:18 AM To: winuski@localnet.net; MSA440@aol.com; KMALLEN12@aol.com; 74650.3717@compuserve.com; chipauch@baldcom.net; jaqby@adelphia.net; mortarbd@localnet.com; Nancyannballard@netzero.net; bal_humph@sals.edu; Rbarber1928@aol.com; tbeards1@nycap.rr.com; Richard_Beresford@nps.gov; tbird@spa.net; FleBis@worldnet.att.net; CakeLadie@aol.com; jonb199447@aol.com; jboyce01@nycap.rr.com; bibcg@nycap.rr.com; mlbrizzee@yahoo.com; info@brooksidemuseum.org; vtitus@ipa.net; pegjamb2@gateway.net; susanb@localnet.com; JPZintz@aol.com; gbrm81a@prodigy.com Subject: Index to 1870 federal census - At NYS Library Just wanted to let you know the New York State Library has received the new 6-volume 1870 census index for Upstate New York. Here is the record from SIRSI (the library's online catalog): Control number: ocm43815523 ISBN: 0944931243 (set) Author: Steuart, Raeone Christensen. Title: New York (Upstate) 1870 census index / edited by Raeone Christensen Steuart. Imprint: Bountiful, Utah : Heritage Quest, 2000. Physical description: 6 v. ; 28 cm. Note: "Precision Indexing"--Cover. Contents: v. 1. A-Clobert v. 2. Clobridge-Garra v. 3. Garrabrant-Klocher v. 4. Klock-Olmer v. 5. Olmested-Snover v. 6. Snow-Z. Held by: NYSL Subject: Registers of births, etc.--New York (State) Subject: New York (State) Genealogy. Subject: New York (State) Census, 1870 Indexes. Subject: United States Census, 9th, 1870 Indexes. Added entry: Precision Indexing. NYSL CALL NUMBER COPY MATERIAL LOCATION 1)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.1 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ 2)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.2 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ 3)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.3 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ 4)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.4 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ 5)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.5 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ 6)974.7 qN532 201-1052 V.6 1 BOOK-Q R-REF no circ

If there is someone out there who has ancestry who wouldn't mind doing a lookup for me, please contact me. Vicki

Hi Folks, My name is Ted Myers, I do civil War lookups and research. If there is a civil war soldier you are looking for I would be glad to help. Ted

I normally don't post queries from the query page here - but this particular one seems important enough to get as much exposure as possible: "I bought a diary off ebay. It is from 1868. I believe the writer to be from Plymouth, NY. I think his name is Chas. W. BROWNING. It is wrote in the back of the diary. I am trying to find out as much as I can about him. He talks of teaching a school some of the time. He lives at home and talks of daily chores and living with his father and mother. He talks of Willie and Gib and Eliza alot. I think they are his brothers and sister or farm help. His best friend seems to be Will INMAN. He talks of him alot. He also talks of going to each of these towns Oxford, Norwich, N. Norwich, Smyna, Hamilton, Beaver Meadows, Sherburne, Earlville etc. He speaks of being in a lodge. The following names appear thoughout the diary. Bill FRINK, Charles STEWART, Warren STEERE, Charles NEWTON, Squire TINKER, James MUNDY, Bill WOOLDRIDGE, Elder COCHRANE, Rubie NEWTON, Charles DAVIS, Carl DANIELS, Rosy MERRIAM, Palmer BOWERS, Deloss FINCH, Thomas MOWERS, Dr. SHOALES, Charles BROWN, Elder NICKOLSON, Mr. Knowles, Alvin HUNTLEY, Bill INMAN, Bertrand HINMAN, Martha HOLCOMB, Dr. Hall, H.G. PRINDLE, Alice CHAFEY, etc. If any of these names are familiar and you can give me some history on them or send me some scans of photos of them I would be thankful. I will also scan the pages of where he mentions your Kin Folks and e-mail it to you in return. Hope to hear from somebody soon. Thanks, John" You may contact Mr. Hutto at: jbm@communicomm.com Tim

Taking up where we left off, we proceeded south from Bouckville towards Hamilton on State 12B. Arriving in Hamilton, about an hour or so from dusk, I took the first street I could find that would take me over to county 83 north that runs between Hamilton and Madison passing just west of Lake Moraine and the Americana Village. At the extreme northern end of the Town of Hamilton / Village of Hamilton lies an old cemetery on one's left as one heads north along 83. This is, I believe, the old village cemetery as I was later to learn contains either the founder of or first resident of Hamilton. Who this man was, escapes me at the moment. Years ago when my parents were thinking of names for my new sibling to be and when picking out a boy's name, they thought of using the name Daniel. At the time my grandpa said he knew of no one previously in the family having that name. That was in 1964. My sibling turned out to be a brother and he received the name Daniel. His middle name, Wesley, came from my Mom's Dad's middle name. After I got started researching my family tree in the late 1970s, I discovered that my grandpa's great-grandfather's name was Daniel! I found out this fact from reading an obit of one of my grandpa's aunts. In her early life she lived a short time with her grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Stowell of Hamilton. So that was my first clue to a Hamilton connection. Several years ago, a cousin from Otselic, son of the lady we'd visited on Sunday, mentioned that his daughter had been on a school outing to the Americana Village which has an old school house, some other outbuildings, perhaps a church and an old cemetery. So back several years ago I visited this because his daughter said that some of the tombstones showed Stowell on them - which of course excited the little girl as that is her surname as well. Turned out that this cemetery was not a creation of the village but was in fact a real cemetery - with at least one son of Daniel Stowell buried there. Subsequent research in Wampsville has led me to believe that my ancestor's farm was at or very near the present site of Americana Village. Neat huh? At the time, I'd had no luck finding a grave of Daniel. When I was last in New York, prior to this current visit, for the funeral of Dad's sister, this cousin and his family along with myself went to this particular village cemetery in Hamilton. After about 30 minutes of looking we came across the grave of our common ancestor and his wife. The purpose of the visit this Wednesday was to check on the condition of the graves - nearly 7 years later. My cousin had his snow shovel along which we put to good use, uncovering my ancestor's stone. It was as I had found it 7 years ago, flat on its back, off of its pedestal. His wife's stone is still standing. Both stones are of thick marble? about 3 inches thick, 24 inches wide and probably 4 to 5 feet in height. In other words, Daniel's stone will take some hefty folk to retrieve it from the hold the ground has on it and reposition it on a pedestal. The odd thing about the name on the stone - listed as Daniel Stowal - his wife as Gertrude Stowel. His generation only used one 'L', while mine uses 2. After getting a couple of photos, we proceeded to the village 'square' to see when the Hamilton library and/or town offices might be open to see if we could inquire about getting the stone reset. The village offices being closed, we proceeded homeward. Next installment - Visit to Madison County - Snow! - more cemeteries. Tim

>From yesterday's post: I went into the post office and waited my turn. When I got to the counter I asked the lady there, who turned out to be the postmistress about the church and cemetery. The first thing she said was, 'You're not from around here are you?' :) I had to confess I was not. But then she too said she'd only been there a few months having moved there from northeastern Pennsylvania. Just at that moment a lady walked up to do some post office business and the postmistress said, "well here is who you need to ask - she works with the historical society or knows who to contact." I briefly explained to the customer what I was seeking. She laughed and said, "you can follow me home. I live next door to the church you are looking for." So we followed her home. The old church is there next to her house but looks the worse for wear. She said that a number of years ago the stained glass windows were sent to a church in Kentucky. Some of the folk in DeRuyter lamented that because the windows had had the names of some of the founders included in the stained glass windows. >From the SDB list: A small correction... > The stained glass windows of the DeRuyter church were donated to the Cornerstone SDB church in/near Tupelo, MS. >While the local historians may be disappointed, the windows are continuing to be used in a vibrant, young church of the same >denomination and will be preserved for years to come. SDB history cannot be restricted to a particular region. The SDB list is SDB-L@rootsweb.com Also for those who might be interested there is a Seventh Day Baptist website - http://www.seventhdaybaptist.org/ Tim

One other thing I had thought about doing, having heard wondrous tales about, was to visit the genealogical library in Syracuse. So we set about going there. We turned out of DeRuyter going northeast on NY 13 towards Sheds where we picked up State 80 going through New Woodstock, skirting Cazenovia, passing the Lorenzo Historical site, and stopped for dinner at Manlius. Along the way we saw several deer in the undergrowth - well my cousin saw most of them, I was busy with watching the traffic. After a bit of lunch, we headed west northwest towards Syracuse, going to the library address we'd picked up earlier at the Norwich library which indicated it was on Montgomery Street. Along our way, we apparently traveled through some of the rougher sections of Syracuse. We found a parking spot near the library - a somewhat shabby looking part of town - perhaps it was from all the sand / snow. The library had some not so nice looking teenagers hanging around it but we went up to the front door and found it locked. Just a couple of minutes earlier we had stopped to find the Onandaga Historical Association closed. The kids there said we needed to go around the side to get in. So we went through this open air parking lot to the side door where we found a guard which while interesting didn't set of any alarm bells. We asked the guard if this was indeed the library - as that is what the front of the building has - etched in stone - but were told that no it was not but that now it is a facility for violent youthful offenders.... However, the guard told us the library was now located in the Galleries about two blocks away. Not wanting to leave my car in such an area, we drove the two blocks to the area of the library and finally found parking about a block away. The neighborhood here, even though broad daylight, didn't look much better than the place we'd just left. Nevertheless we left the two vehicles and proceeded to the library. The library location - one the upper floors of this intown mall is quite and interesting concept. This was my first experience that I can recall of going to a library that has both research and general population libraries under one roof and having to go through metal detectors to get in. We quickly found out where to go to get to the history section. Once there, I spoke with a couple of the persons there and we looked at what they had for census records - specifically the 1855 State census. I noticed Chenango there but not Madison which I thought rather odd. Elaine continued to look at the collection while I spoke with one of the librarians. I asked if I could use a public terminal. She said they were on another floor. So I went to this floor and found that the public had use of 2 computers for Internet use. I found this quite funny for the Syracuse library to have only 2 computers for the Internet whereas the tiny library at New Berlin has 4 computers with 3 Internet ready. We'd been at the library approximately an hour when feeling uncomfortable about where my car was parked we decided to leave. I've been in most major American cities - some even at night and yet I felt more uncomfortable there in Syracuse than I had had in any other American city now or in the past. Arriving back at our vehicles we said our goodbyes as Elaine and her dog went south towards her home and my cousin and me headed back towards home. As we got back near Cazenovia, I said to my cousin - since we have some time - let's stop here in Cazenovia, for there is a fellow here I'd like to find if I can by the name of Dan W. Going through Cazenovia we spied the library. Stopping there, I finally was able to speak to one of the attendants there and ask about Dan. Boy was I surprised. Seems Dan had left the area several years earlier for West Virginia, yet runs a smashing page of research for the Cazenovia region. They told me how much he'd done for local history and how much they missed him. I gave the folks there the heads up on my web page for Madison County and my email address. While I was sorry that I'd missed meeting Dan, I was glad to meet a couple of nice folks at the library. As the time was approaching 5 or 6 PM we started our road trip home. We proceeded east out of Cazenovia on US20 passing through Nelson, Morrisville, Pine Woods, Bouckville and then to Madison - where I hoped I might find someone from the Madison Historical Society. However we arrived there just as they were rolling up the sidewalks for the night, and I couldn't figure out where to stop in this antique's capital to ask anyone about the group. So finding a place to retrace our steps we went west again on US20 to the 12B road to connect with State 46 heading south to Hamilton. And that is where I'm going to stop for this chapter, as I need to reconstruct from memory just what happened next for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Some of the details as to what happened when with regard to Hamilton I need to think through. Wednesday is pretty fresh in my memory as that was my Madison County day visit but some smaller details need to be thought about. Until next time.

When I last left you, I was meeting Sandy Goodspeed and the New Berlin historian, Barb Avery. Tuesday morning arrived. We were to meet a volunteer at the library in Norwich for a day of exploring. We arrived there around 10 AM, with a few early morning flurries but mostly a bright sunshine glistening off the snow. The day was very clear. Some of you may know, Elaine Decker, while others may not. My trip had been planned for two distinct goals - one to visit my relatives there that I'd not seen since the fall of 1994 and secondly to meet as many of the folks I had corresponded with over the last few years regarding the genealogical and historical aspects of central New York state. For the second part I really didn't plan to do that much genealogical research for my own roots but rather seek out new sources of material to add to the web sites. In recent months someone had passed along information concerning one of my ancestors being buried at DeRuyter and that they had been members of the Seventh Day Baptist Church there. So that is the direction we first headed. Before we left Norwich though, Elaine, who had brought along her camera made some photos of the Chenango County Courthouse for me from various angles. We were traveling in 2 vehicles, my cousin and myself in my car and Elaine and her dog in her vehicle. I am so glad my cousin was with me for even with a map we traveled some mighty interesting roads and he was able to point out various things to me along the way, that had he not been along would of course have been completely lost on me. Taking some back streets out of west Norwich, we went up the hill on NY 23 towards South Plymouth. One thing that has always intrigued me about this part of the country is all the towns with basically the same name changed only by adding a direction to the front of the name. There is the root town name with north, east, south or west added to the front. It seems like the folks naming towns couldn't think of anything better to call their little hamlets. I honestly don't remember passing through South Plymouth but somewhere along that route we passed over a new concrete bridge that was replacing what had, according to my cousin, been a very nasty section of road with many accidents. At Stuart Corners we veered to the right on county 16 headed towards Beaver Meadow. This road is known as the East River Road. Now Beaver Meadow today is not the Beaver Meadow of yesteryear. My earliest recollection of visiting Beaver Meadow was in the summer of 1974 - when I remember going down this road from west to east across this big extremely green meadow with this little hamlet about half way across. It was one of those places one wants to visit just to say one has been there. I suppose it was somewhat like a rite of passage. This community along with several others in this part of New York had become in my mind the stuff of legend as my Grandpa told stories of the past and of friends and family that lived, worked or died there. The road on the larger state maps show the road from Plymouth, which we passed through on the way to Beaver Meadow as running straight northwest right to DeRuyter. The reality of it is though that the road dead ends into NY 26, with no indication of which way one is to go to get to DeRuyter. The road had risen here from the valley to the side of a hill as we came up to meet NY 26. My cousin thought we should turn right but I thought left as I figured if we turned right we'd end up in Otselic and even though we could of course get to DeRuyter from there, I'd much rather go the more or less direct route. So after talking it out for a minute or so, we turned left. About 1/2 mile south going towards Otselic Center we came to the next leg of County 16 heading towards DeRuyter. We traveled on this road for several miles and as we crossed into Madison County and the town of Georgetown the road changed to county road 58 or the Crumb Hill road. As we traveled out of northwest Chenango County, the road was going up and down several hills. As we came down towards DeRuyter we seemed to be going down this long valley slowly dropping mile by mile as we went down the valley to the town. Arriving in DeRuyter, and coming in from a different way than I had been before, I had no bearings or sense of where I was. Of course DeRuyter and pretty much everything else looks so much different in the winter than in the summer as well. We proceeded along until I spied the post office. I figured if anyone knew where the Seventh Day Baptist church cemetery was the postmaster or someone working there would know. I went into the post office and waited my turn. When I got to the counter I asked the lady there, who turned out to be the postmistress about the church and cemetery. The first thing she said was, 'You're not from around here are you?' :) I had to confess I was not. But then she too said she'd only been there a few months having moved there from northeastern Pennsylvania. Just at that moment a lady walked up to do some post office business and the postmistress said, "well here is who you need to ask - she works with the historical society or knows who to contact." I briefly explained to the customer what I was seeking. She laughed and said, "you can follow me home. I live next door to the church you are looking for." So we followed her home. The old church is there next to her house but looks the worse for wear. She said that a number of years ago the stained glass windows were sent to a church in Kentucky. Some of the folk in DeRuyter lamented that because the windows had had the names of some of the founders included in the stained glass windows. We looked across a patch of snow and saw the cemetery about 75 yards away. The snow here was about 18 inches deep. Being from the part of the world that rarely wears boots - at least the snow kind - I decided to just go for it, even though I had snow boots in the trunk and we had a snow shovel along. Luckily the snow had a crust and we barely sank in the snow. Since the cemetery is quite small - well at least what we could see - and since there are only about 5 to 6 rows of graves we each took a couple of rows and started looking for my ancestor's graves - WILCOX - by name. In just a short while - maybe 5 minutes, I found the tombstone over in the corner near a large tree. My cousin used the snow shovel to get some of the snow away from the stones - one modest tall marker and a couple of smaller ones on the side - then Elaine pulled out her camera and made pictures all around of the stones. That done, we started back to the vehicles. About this time Elaine's dog discovered someone cooking outdoors and went to investigate. Elaine soon recovered him and we talked about what to do for dinner. Part 4b to follow. Tim Stowell Moderator Chenango County mailing list Coordinator Chenango County, NYGenWeb pages http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychenan

Rev. J. P. Simmons served as pastor of the Cortland Baptist Ch. between 1840 and 1851. According to Centennial Anniversary handbook of the church, he spent his final days in Fulton, Oswego Co. NY living with his daughter. He was there in 1881, but served in positions in the neighboring towns during the early 1850's. Does anybody know if he is the Jonathan P. Simmons who is living in Cortlandville census in 1850? Anything more about either of these men would be of great help in figuring out if these are my Simmons. Especially what the census says about Jonathan, who is listed on page 356. Vicki Hall Titus Desc of Lydia (Simmons) Hall

Horace Carpenter born Cortland Co., New York, Dec. 1, 1805 died Feb. 17, 1895 Celia Carpenter died May 25, 1878 age 71 yrs. 2 mos. 25 d Forest Hill Cemetery, 415 S. Observatory, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 734-663-5018

Wanted to warn everybody - Wm & Penny Kresl [kresl@elknet.net] had a virus on her machine yesterday. It is a fairly new one, so I am cutting and pasting the info she sent me on it her in case anybody besides me received the virus. (The good news is that I deleted it the minute I saw it). Here is the data she sent: Tell others..Do not open. I got rid of it now. I think it only went to about 5 incoming messages, but unfortunately about 3 of those were mailing lists. See message below. Again, I am very sorry but hey..it happens, and I thought it was reliable.... Penny ---------------------------REGARDING THE ATTACHMENT TO MY MAIL THAT WAS INADVERTENTLY INFECTED----------------------- DO NOT OPEN ANY FILE ATTACHMENTS. The ATTACHMENT is a RECENT (APRIL 12th) dangerous WORM that scatters e-mail attachments to others, it also parks a TROJAN program on every computer that has opened that attachment that will intercept ALL KEYPRESSES and E-MAILS those via the internet to a HACKER identified only as: "1d8l1@mailandews.com" Here is a link to the AVP WEB SITE with info about this WORM/TROJAN called "BADTRANS" from Central Command (maker of several ANTI-VIRUS Products): http://support.avx.com/cgi-bin/command.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_ref no=0 10412-000008 You can tell if your computer has been infected by doing a START > FIND >FILES (or by looking in your C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder) for the following files (referenced in that article): KERN32.EXE INETD.EXE HKK32.EXE My husband downloaded and used the FREE ANTIVIR Personal Edition virus scanner that FOUND THIS WORM (others did not catch it): http://www.free-av.com/index.html You WILL still need to manually FIX some WINDOWS SETTINGS referenced in that article. DO NOT OPEN ANY FILE ATTACHMENTS. end of note: Vicki

This letter made me sit up and start to rethink some of my assumptions about passenger lists. NEVER even conceived that the records were not extant. Thought it might do the same for you so I asked Ken if I could forward it to the list and he said OK. Vicki -----Original Message----- From: Kenneth Tessendorff [SMTP:k.tessendorff@worldnet.att.net] Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 3:25 PM To: GEN-NYS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: GERMANS TO AMERICA/NEW YORK PASSENGER LISTS-UPDATE Hello, Thank you to the many list members who answered my question about the passenger lists in Germans to America. Perhaps the information below will be of help to some of you looking for New York passenger lists. I had emailed NARA and asked why they were unable to find the passenger lists from the date specified in Germans to America. They subsequently did a second search and were still unable to find the list. I also received an email message from the "chief of the unit which processes these requests." Her message included the following paragraphs: "The primary source for the "Germans to America" series is the passenger manifests of vessels arriving in the port of New York, 1820-1896, which the National Archives microfilmed in the 1970s. The original paper copies of the manifests were transferred to the Balch Institute for Immigration Studies in Philadelphia. The reason that the records were sent to Philadelphia is that the Balch was hoping to index them. As you know there are no name indexes for the arrivals in the port of New York for the period of 1847-1896. The Balch has published various indexes: Germans, Irish, and Italians, as a result of their efforts. However, the manifests are not the only source used to create the indexes. The project has used records of departures that exist in foreign archives to augment and supplement the Customs manifests. Having said this, I will admit that we are human and we are able to make mistakes. We have found that some of the manifests were not microfilmed in the 1970s. The existence of the paper copies in Philadelphia allows us to retrieve the missing manifests in those cases." She went on to suggest that I find the passenger lists myself by using microfilmed lists that are available at a variety of locations. Based on what I have learned so far, I have to draw the following conclusions: 1. The original (paper) passenger list I need may be at the Balch Institute for Immigration Studies in Philadelphia and may never have been filmed. The authors of Germans to America may have taken information related to my ancestors from these paper copies of the passenger lists. 2. The authors of Germans to America may have taken the information from "records of departures that exist in foreign archives to augment and supplement the Customs manifests." My understanding is that all the passenger lists for the port of Bremen have been destroyed. If there is some other source where the authors may have found the information, I would like to know what it might be. 3. Although the "existence of the paper copies in Philadelphia allows us to retrieve the missing manifests in those cases", I guess they don't intend to do that in my case. The lady made no mention of following up and requesting that the Balch "retrieve the missing manifests" and send the appropriate list to NARA. 4. According to their web site, the Balch will not check their lists for researchers, so there is no way I can verify that they have the paper list dated 8 Sep 1871 for the ship HANSA from Bremen to New York. 5. Other information I have leads me to suspect that my ancestors may actually have arrived in the US a number of months before Sep 1871. If I am correct, than the authors of Germans to America may have erred on the date. However, there seems to be no way to get in touch with them to verify that they have published the information correctly. Action plan. I will first check "Registers of Vessels Arriving at the Port of New York from Foreign Ports, 1789 - 1919" to see when the HANSA arrived in New York from Bremen. Then I will order the appropriate rolls of passenger list film from the LDS and see if they appear anywhere in those listings. Of course, this plan of attack is based on the theory that there actually was a ship named HANSA that transported passengers from Bremen to New York and may have arrived at some time in 1871. I guess the only other approach is to do a line by line search of all the ships that arrived in New York during 1871. Having already done this for several years of New Orleans lists, I am afraid that I might go blind in the process. ;-) I don't know whether the information included above is good news or bad news for anyone else that might be having similar problems finding a passenger list for their ancestors, but perhaps there is something here that may help. Any additional comments or instructions will be appreciated. Ken T. ______________________________

When I last left you, I was visiting family members just outside of Smyrna but nearer to Otselic on Sunday evening. We ended up staying at my relative's house until after 9 PM. We got back to where I was staying around 10 PM. My cousin and his wife went to bed, while I got busy downloading and answering email until my normal bedtime of 3 AM. The next morning after breakfast and another download of email, we set out on the day's adventure. We traveled east out of South New Berlin on route 23 towards Morris. In all my years of going to going to New York, Morris was not one of those most visited places. The last time I remember being there had been at night, visiting at a friend's church. Of course by daylight, the town didn't seem to be as I remembered it. We flitted in and out of Morris in a heartbeat, heading east along 23 towards and through West Laurens, West Oneonta and into Oneonta proper. The journey over, though not that far, was a pleasant respite from my daily trek back home. Along our route we came upon an unusual sight - that of the car in front of us for quite some time. What was striking about this late model car was that it apparently had no visible driver. No head or arms were to be seen. Even looking at the reflection in the rear view mirror of the car showed not a soul driving. Had it not been for the shoulder strap of the seat belt mechanism showing that it was in use, one could have concluded the car was being driven by remote control! I'd not seen such a sight since my last journey to Florida years ago. I was to meet in Oneonta at 10:30 but because of a late start and other factors, did not arrive until nearly 11:00 to meet, chat and say thank you so much to Sandy Goodspeed, without which a nice section of material on the Chenango site would not be there. The neat thing about vacation and a loose agenda, is that one has the luxury of time, to a certain extent, to sit and talk of what has been accomplished, to plan further and to talk about things in general. I told Sandy about the material I had found in Norwich at the county library - the 1890 New York, Ontario and Western railway guide - a quasi-1890 census for those areas. She in turn told me of her next project she's working on and other interests she has in the area of central New York. The unfortunate thing though was that time passed quickly and it was soon time to go as I was to meet the New Berlin Town Historian in New Berlin at 100PM. Now we come to the explanation of time zones. Most folks are well acquainted with the Eastern Standard Zone, the Central, Pacific and sometimes even the Mountain time zones but few people in the North are aware of the Southern Time Zone. Basically the Southern Time Zone covers that region of the South where time either stands still or is nearly nonexistent. The concept of time standing still is fairly well understood because folks tend to think of Rip Van Winkle in that regard. However, the nearly nonexistent is much harder to understand much less explain. There are probably many variations of this but two particular versions come to mind at the present. One version is where Southerners who have been visiting someone decides it is time to go home or move on. Gradually pushing away from the table or getting to their feet they begin the process of saying goodbye and leaving. One can gauge how Southern one is by how long it takes to actually leave after saying goodbye. If one has planned a short visit to someone, it's best to come in say hello and then immediately start saying goodbye. The average good-bye lasts approximately 30 minutes while others may stretch into several hours or even days. The second variation of this phenomenon denies that clocks exist - saying that we'll get there when we get there - no need to hurry or that somehow one can wish their way to somewhere by forcing the clock to tick slower on their account while they travel at the speed of light. Sometimes Southerners take this time zone with them when they travel outside of the South. I trend toward the latter but have been known to use the former as circumstances demand. Suffice it to say I did not get to New Berlin for my 100 PM appointment with Barb Avery. Instead we went into the town library. The librarian told me that Barb had just left and that she would call and let her know I had arrived at the library. The library in New Berlin is the best equipped library I've seen for a town of its size. They have 4 computer terminals for public access with at least 2 Internet ready. The library also has a small but impressive section of books on Chenango, Madison and other counties as well as regional and state resources. Barb soon came and we talked about New Berlin. In recent months she had started sending me information for the web site, including identification of the men in the GAR reunion photo, cemetery listings and other material. She had been on the committee that surveyed St. Andrews cemetery this past summer, which I'll put on-line once the material makes it to me. We chatted on and I told her the material I'd found in Norwich and of my visit to meet Sandy earlier in the morning. I told Barb I'd seen and copied some pages from a book at the library - the 1869-70 Childs directory of Chenango county, which a young man had contributed about 1/2 the towns listings to me to post about a year and a half ago. In the meantime, my cousin, went across the street and purchased a map of Chenango County for me. Even though it is a modern map, it shows lots of what I'd call wide spots in the road that have a community name attached to it. I used one of the computers at the library to show Barb some of the work I'd done on other sites as we discussed how best to present data. We then visited the previously mentioned room of historical material where I talked with her about what I'd like to have added to the web site. I spied a copy of a book similar to the Chenango County directory I'd seen at the Norwich library and made a comment about how I'd passed up getting a copy years before, as I had only one line about one relative in it. Barb then made a generous offer to give me an extra copy that she had of the Madison County book. She had this at her home and took me there to get the book. Arriving at her house she showed me some of the records she has there. I saw where she had listings of cemeteries and mentioned that there was one cemetery in all of Chenango County that I wish I had a listing for as I've relatives there and one that I'd seen many obits mention as the final resting place. That cemetery is Sherburne West Hill. She then told me she had a copy of same at least through the late 1950s that she would get copied for me. As the day was getting late we returned home. ----------- As the day is getting late here - 245 AM, I'm heading for the bed and catch ya'll another day in one time zone or another! Tim Stowell Moderator Chenango County mailing list Coordinator Chenango County, NYGenWeb pages http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychenan

Chenango: Another station along the New York, Ontario and Western Railway from the 1890 survey has been added: South New Berlin - http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychenan/90-nyo-w.htm Tim Stowell Moderator Chenango County mailing list Coordinator Chenango County, NYGenWeb pages http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychenan

Pam, As others have mentioned, it was likely the opening of western lands for homesteading. With the Lousiana Purchase in the very early 1800's, the west opened rapidly along the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, and continued until some of the last western lands were opened to homesteading in the very early 1900's. (Northwestern South Dakota about 1904, for example). Also, a lot of people followed canal development to Illinois before the Civil war and railroad development across the continent just after the Civil War. I would like to know if anyone has one good reference on the dates of the opening of settlement lands state-by-state. In the case of my family (Drake, Clark), they left Cortland County in the 1830's and settled in northern Illinois/Wisconsin. In between, there are some lost years. People of their names homesteaded in western Ohio and I will eventually establish if this was indeed the same family. From records of other descendants, they successively lived in Wisconsin, eastern SD, western SD, Montana, and Oregon. Many "bounced" back to live near family that setttled in these various places. It has been a successful research technique to look for family records, and relatives, along this path. One ancestor that returned to New York from Wisconsin about 1860 was Nathan Whitman(was married to Elizabeth Drake). I have never relocated his trail in New York, and if anyone has information I would appreciate it. Pam, have fun on your research, Earl Pam wrote: > My BROOKS and BURR ancestors moved from Cortland County, NY to Franklin > County, Iowa prior to 1860. Does anyone know what might have been happening in > Cortland County to have caused this migration? > -- > Peace and Gentle Sunsets, > Pam > > ==== NYCORTLA Mailing List ==== > > ============================== > Ancestry.com Genealogical Databases > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/rwlist2.asp > Search over 2500 databases with one easy query!

on 4/18/01 9:03 PM, Mustang69290@aol.com at Mustang69290@aol.com wrote: > <<Were there other families that migrated to Iowa from Cortland Co., NY > at > about this same time? >> > I have a William Fletcher Butman who came from Cortland County to Montgomery Co., Iowa and then Taylor co., IA, where I am. But he homesteaded in South Dakoka for a few years before coming to IOWA.

According to Smith's History, they should have been one, but the FHC's only have the records from 1829 on. That and a lot of other church records are on: 1304769 Film/fiche search results: Item 1 Records of the Congregational Church in De Ruyter (now German), 1805-1825 Congregational Church in German (New York) Item 2 Records of Congregational Church, Pitcher, 1858-1877 Congregational Church (Pitcher, New York) Item 3 Church records, 1881-1928 Willet Methodist Episcopal Church (New York) Item 4 Church records, 1807-1848 Baptist Church in Homer (New York) Items 5-6 Church records, 1807-1822, 1873-1914 First Baptist Church (Solon, New York) Items 7-9 Church records, 1829-1914 Baptist Church of Truxton (New York) On Friday, April 20, 2001 6:14 AM, shearer1 [SMTP:shearer1@gateway.net] wrote: > Does anyone know of any Baptist Church records for Truxton between 1820 and > 1830? Was there even a Baptist Church there at that time? > Anyone have any Graves family living there at that time? > Thanks, > Meg > > > > ==== NYCORTLA Mailing List ==== > > > > ============================== > Create a FREE family website at MyFamily.com! > http://www.myfamily.com/banner.asp?ID=RWLIST2 > >

Does anyone know of any Baptist Church records for Truxton between 1820 and 1830? Was there even a Baptist Church there at that time? Anyone have any Graves family living there at that time? Thanks, Meg

<<Were there other families that migrated to Iowa from Cortland Co., NY at about this same time? >> --------------------------------------------------- Mark, I have a Burlingham ancestor whose family moved from Cortland Co NY to Jones Co IA ca. 1850, and a Staley ancestor who moved from Cortland Co to Jones Co ca1860s. Don't know if that's any help to you. sherry