This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Sanford, Woodruff, Schofield Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/4FFBAIB/1010 Message Board Post: For those of you who are descendants of this John Sanford b. 1774, Newark NJ, d. 1844 Urbana, Steuben, NY, I am going through the previously avialble descendants using the US censuses for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920, and other public data sources to add individuals not previoulsy shown in web accessable trees. The technique is to look for the known descendants in 1850, and then track them through the censuses until all children are found, and then look up the children the same way. Marriage databases are used when available to find spouses for the female children. I have been able to add quite a few individuals this way. I have done Andrew b. 1810, Nancy b. 1796, and I am working on Mary b. 1799, so far only her first four children. There is some risk in this technique. It is possible I could be fooled by a coincidence of names, ages, and birthplaces in the census, so I request anyone with knowledge of the new individuals to check them. Also, if anyone wants to join in, feel free. To see what I have so far see: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=rtegen&id=I00163 A note of caution, there are trees out there for this wing of the family in which some individual decided that all people with no given death date should be assigned their biblical lifespan, and therefore they are said to have died 70 years after their birth. My father therefore is said to have died 23 years before he actually did, and his father is said to have died an equal amount later than he actually did. If you see this, remove all death dates that fit this pattern.