Dear Group, I just wanted to share some late night thoughts with you. Debbie had mentioned that her Pratt family came to Niagara Co. from VT and that her Hosmer family came here from CT and mentioned that the two families eventually intermarried. Well, in the process of searching through my files on the two familes, about the only Pratt family I had put to paper was the one of Rufus Pratt who was the son of Josiah Pratt who married Annie Lutts, daughter of Michael Lutts, one of our early earliest settlers. Josiah was born in MA and in Pool's "Landmarks of Niagara Co." it said that Josiah arrived in the Town of Porter in 1817 with Peter Tower, a cousin of his. Well, that of course, means that the Pratts and the Towers from MA were related. And Debbie said that her Pratts from VT and her Hosmers from CT were related. Well, surprise, surprise! Here in the Town of Porter, Prentice Hosmer's son Lewis Cass Hosmer (b 1836, Avon, Livingston Co., NY) married Peter Tower's daughter Olive Almena Tower (b 1846 Niagara Co., NY) in 1869. And it goes back to my theory that family followed family members westward and that they felt a kinship with those families who came from the same general area that they did. And I'll bet my farm that each one of those Pratt and Hosmer and Tower families had at LEAST one family member who eventually ended up FURTHER west in Michigan. Come to think about it, I seem to recall one of Michael Lutt's descendants visiting here this past year from Ohio. I introduced her to her 90-year-old distant Lutts cousin. The girl was a sweetheart, she was! She sent me a jar of homemade raspberry jam after she returned home! Now all of my ancestors--including my parents--came from Pennsylvania, but to paraphrase the expression that is used on PA licence plates ("You have a friend in Pennsylvania"), you have a cousin in Niagara County, NY! It's just a matter of finding your ancestors here and, who knows but what I could just get on the phone and call up a cousin or two of yours! vee Youngstown, NY