I'm going to give it a try, again, and see how things go.....I will be gradually going through the old posts to see if I can answer any of the posted queries. It's unclear to me whether the family document was written in 1900, or just found around then...which, makes a big difference. Nothing written in 1900 ABOUT something that took place in 1797, can be taken as fact, without giving some sort of proof of the fact...I've told before of my several times great grandmother who was known by the whole family to have been born in Atlanta, Ga, in 1826. However, when I began my research I could find neither hide nor hair of her there. Later I found, on the death certificate of her son, that she had been born in Milledgeville, GA, where I then found her....all became clear to me, when I discovered that Milledgeville had been the capital of GA when Susan Ann was born...thus generation 1 said "Susan Ann was born in Milledgeville, the capital of GA"...generation 2 came along and said "Susan Ann was born in the capital of Ga",,,and from then on everyone said, "Susan Ann was born in Atlanta, the capital of Ga."...things have quite a way of getting tweaked, through the years, the reason for NEVER accepting as fact, the family lore type things.... documentation is the only way! Delaware Co was created, if memory serves, in 1789, only 8 years off your date, of 1797, which might be the answer - the family may have been in Chester Co for generations before the change to Del. Co, and simply thought of themselves as Chester Countians. Chichester was originally a section, not a town, of Chester Co....there had been Upper and Lower Chichester since the early 1700s, and in the mid 1700s were officially separated into 2 separate ones.....Upper and Lower.... Sandra "An old long-lost family document (since 1900 or so) evidently showed that an ancestor was born in "Chester, Chester County, Pa." in 1797, years after the City of Chester was actually located in the newer Delaware County. Perhaps it should have read "Chichester", which was the old name for West Chester, in Chester County. However, even this data is not correct. In 19th Century Censuses of Illinois, Michigan and New York State, this man acknowledges Pennsylvania as his place of birth, but consistently claims having been born closer to the year 1815