I'd love for an historian to chime in here, but my amateur opinion is that it may have been less what was happening in NY and more about the land opening up in the Midwest. Virtually everyone I'm related to came to the Midwest in the mid 1800s, from New York (Cortland Co!), Connecticut, the Netherlands, the UK... One of the stories I've unearthed was about my relatives from the Netherlands who were led first to Colorado with a whole entourage who dumped their life savings into the effort only to find that the promises of fertile land were empty....they were "rescued" by a church and brought to Minnesota, where they lived in poverty for many, many years, but they did get their land. I think the promise of land brought people here, and the homesteads in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, etc. were "given away" with a promise to stay and farm. I think. Suzanne Stenson O'Brien a Minnesotan again suzzo@bitstream.net 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!