This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/gRB.2ACE/1185.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Hello, Kurt, Welcome to the Club of Searchers with Brick Walls in Montgomery/Fulton County. I may be a charter member of the Club, having hit the Brick Wall in 1963. In my experience, the records for this period are meagre. As you know, the census lists only the heads of families. Civil records were not required until much later. The churches were newly formed; many apparently had itinerent or shared pastors, who may have kept the records personally. Furthermore, some of the Protestant denominations (e.g. Baptist) did not record "vital" events. The cemeteries have been well-recorded, but as Mr. Cornell points out, these records are only the stones, not the sexton's records. All the towns are supposed to have a Town Historian, but often they, while helpful (like Mr. Cornell and his father before him), don't have much information about the early times. The land records are particularly frustrating. As apparently you know, the land was originally given to proprietors, many of whom held on to it for decades, leasing it to the actual inhabitants listed in the census. I have been unable to find leases, lot listings of the various grants or even precise grant locations. The Montgomery County Department of History and Archives has much information, including miscellaneous surname files, which they will search for an hourly fee ($25, I think). The LDS church has microfilmed the holdings of MCDH&A as well as those at the county courthouses at Fonda and Johnstown. Their catalog at www.familysearch.org lists just about everything extant. The Fulton and Montgomery sites in the USGenWeb also have good information gathered by dedicated volunteers. Our last hope may be privately-held family records. This is one of the values of these mailing lists. Or, at least, we have others with whom to commiserate! I hope this information is useful; please do not hesitate to ask for additional details.