At 09:56 AM 4/10/2009, Loretta Lisowski wrote: >Thanks so much Geoff! Was Fort Penn close to Lower Smithfield? Depends on what you mean by "close"? By today's standards or during the Indian Wars? Fort Penn during the days of its existance was the place anyone within many miles would go for safety, with Fort Depui being the other possibility. > I am also >looking for marriage, birth and death records from this area in the period >from 1749 to 1770 which was prior to the family's move into the hornet's >nest of what was the Wyoming Valley. Where would I find church records or >tax lists? Any library with PA history will have the resources. Humphrey's births books go over county by county the churches, it's basically an index to pre-1800 church lists. Tax lists are fairly well published and go back the furthest, but all you get is head of household. All of those resources are at both the Monroe Co Hist Soc and the Eastern Monroe Public Library which are going to be your best local places to go for info. At the 1749 time frame though, about the only church records you're going to get is Hamilton Lutheran. For more extensive resources for all of PA try the Marx Room at the Easton Public Library. Geoff Crawford geoff@innov8cs.com