Betty wrote: >This week I decided to find out more about Levy MILLER again. and >John Metcalf's web site shows that Levi was born in Laconia, NH. and then >if Levi MILLER was a farmer, and was living in the villages along the shore of Lake Winnepesauki in NH, which had very good farmland, why would he and his wife have moved to Canada.. between 1815 and 1820 - and why .. Argenteuil County ? Your letter caught my interest, Betty, Just a guess as to why Levi Miller might have picked up and left New Hampshire in 1815-1820.. 1816 was 'the year without summer' in the Vermont/New hampshire area.. after a three or four year drought, there was a cold spell that included snow in June (In Quebec too) and hail in September and October and major crop failures. One article online about this situation is located at: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/1816.htm http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/goodale/2003%20Goodale%20Appalachia.pdf is the site of a paper on Forest Fires in the White Mountains (Of New Hampshire) and includes references to a hurricane that hit New Hampshire in 1815 and several forest fires followed from 1815-1820 (possibly made worse by the downed/drying timber). In my own family tree, one patriarch of the family killed himself in Shelburne, Vermont in the fall of 1816. It took nearly 20 years to finally settle his estate. His family scattered to the homes of older siblings and uncles.. in Brome and Knowlton, Quebec, in Richford and Colchester, Vermont and the youngest went off to Mooers and Clinton, New York. If anyone has access to the ancestry.com newspapers collection, other neat historical bits might give more clues to why people in general were migrating, even though we may never find precisely why a particular family moved. Good luck, Ellan