Roland, From the diary of Cynthia Hutchinson Norton from Middle Island, Suffolk Co., NY: "April 3 [1810] --Vendue of Joel Swezey attended. They are going to move to the new country. " "Vendue" means "auction". The next time I find Joel, he is in Cayuga Co NY, so I assume that is the "new country" referred to in the diary. One guess is that as fathers died, their sons (usually) ended up with smaller plots of land to farm. After Joel died in Steuben Co NY in 1844, his land was divided among his five sons. Two of his sons moved west in the mid-1850s to the later "new country" in Iowa. Diane http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/jUB.2ACI/1103 Message Board Post: Hi, Can anyone hazard an educated guess as to why my ancestor, David Youngs b.1775, was motivated to leave Suffolk Co. abt. 1796 to come up here to upstate NY? This area was wilderness then! Roland Hanke