LONG POST WARNING Hello Everyone, This is a fairly long story. So first - the moral of the story. Actually there are three morals: 1. Always be sure to make yourself known to the historians and archivists and the associations and societies of the area where your ancestors came from. 2. Always read the footnotes. 3. Don't believe it when people tell you that the Internet is not a reliable source for information about your ancestors. Now, the story. This morning about ten o'clock the phone rang. It was a certain William/Bill Maddock of Lyons, New York. He told me he and his wife had found a locked trunk in their cellar when in 1985 they moved into their new home, built about 1840. The trunk was very light in weight and they thought it was empty. So it didn't matter that it was locked. A few weeks ago Bill's wife "couldn't stand it any longer" and decided that she'd force the lock to be sure the trunk was empty. It wasn't empty. A large shoe box was inside. Inside the box was a pile of papers which originally belonged to my great-great-grandfather William Sisson of Lyons, New York. If you surf to http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~dasisson/richard/aqwg58.htm#150, you will see William Sisson's record on the Sisson Genealogy Site. He and his wife Betsey (Gale) Sisson and his father and mother Elisha and Elizabeth (Chappel) Sisson were the first of the Sisson family to live in Lyons. On that web page you can see his line of Sisson ancestors back to Richard and Mary Sisson who were in Rhode Island by about 1650 or before. I descend from William through his son William Henry Sisson, and his son Frank Munro Sisson, and his son Frederic Gale Sisson. Fred was my father. The papers cover just about all the aspects of William's life. They are an almost incredible mélange of stuff - receipts from people he'd bought things from or paid for their services; and records of family happenings (some are drafts of records that are in his family Bible); letters from relatives, plus copies of letters he wrote back; legal papers (he was a lawyer and a judge); a diary covering a few months late in his life, etc. I spent over two hours with Mr. Maddock who handed me each sheet of paper one by one, so that I could get a little taste of the riches in the pile. And no mean pile it is. The "new" box is piled almost five inches deep with papers, many of them from William's early days in Lyons in the 1820s and many more from the year before he died (in 1863). How did Bill Maddock know to call me with news of his find? He talked with the Wayne County Historical Society's archivist, Sharon Lubitow, who knows of my interest in the Sisson family in Lyons. She was able to give Bill my address and phone number. Voila! See Moral Number 1 above. This collection of William Sisson's papers will give me great pleasure to scan and transcribe. Once I have everything deciphered, I will have a great deal of knowledge about the William's life. William was a very careful and cautious man, keeping track of every cent he owed, paid, or received, or earned interest or rent on. He generated a great deal of paper keeping track of it. He bought and sold property in Wayne county from about 1815 until shortly before his death in 1863. I probably now have a fairly large percentage of that paper, thanks not only to Bill Maddock of Lyons, but to a footnote and to my son Andy. First, the footnote - I knew from William's family Bible which my father inherited in 1955 that William's wife was Betsey Gale . I did not know who her parents were, though I knew she was married in the Town of Scipio, Cayuga County, New York. I began working on Betsey's roots in the early 1980s, finding that the only Gale family in Scipio in the 1810 census was that of Henry Gale, so he became my working candidate for her father. I borrowed Gale genealogies and found a Henry Gale or two of the right birth-date range soon after that. But neither of them had a Betsey daughter (or an Elizabeth). One of the Henrys had a son named Thomas Drury Gale however, and William and Betsey Sisson had a son named Thomas Drury Gale Sisson. That narrowed the search considerably, and eventually I found that Betsey had been omitted from the list of Henry's children in one of the Gale genealogies. Eventually I found Betsey Gale, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Gale, in the International Genealogical Index (the IGI). It cited a vital record in Vermont. The probability that this was "my" Betsey Gale was very large now. When I clicked on one of the many Henry Gale entries in the IGI, I found that he was father to Thomas Drury Gale. Now I was certain. The next step was to search for Henry's family of origin. His mother's name was Elizabeth Chadwick, and I found her in a Chadwick genealogy along with the footnote you've been waiting to hear about. The footnote said that information about Elizabeth (Chadwick) Gale's family came mostly from the Vermont Historical Society. I wrote email to them and asked about the Gale file, and they didn't answer. I wrote again, and they sent a list of the papers, almost all letters - from guess who? from William and Betsey (Gale) Sisson. Would I like copies? Estimated cost about $20. Would I?!! Now I had proof that the Betsey Gale who was William Sisson's wife was indeed the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth (Drury) Gale. See Moral Number 2 above. But wait - There's more! My son Andrew Sisson likes to search for stuff on the Internet. One day he was searching for the name Sisson, and came up with a link to the University of Rochester's Rare Books and Manuscripts Room. (I live in Rochester, and Andy grew up here.) The rare manuscripts held by the U of Rochester included a stash of letters written to and from - no kidding - William and Betsey (Gale) Sisson. I called the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room to ask about their hours and what parking was available, and drove the three miles. Two large boxes were brought to me. I sorted, I listed, and asked for the listed papers to be photocopied, and now I possess 15 or so letters from that source. See Moral Number 3. I could not have done this all by myself. If it were not for my son and my contacts and my searching in the genealogies I borrowed by mail from the New England Historic Genealogical Society (http://www.newenglandancestors.org/rs1/Default.asp) I would not know what I have discovered. And I would have missed some of the joys of my life. I'm working on a book tentatively titled The Sisson Families of Lyons, New York. The publication of the book suddenly has been pushed back several months, but sooner or later my cousins and I are going to have a lot of information about those families, including William, his daughter and sons, and his grandchildren. What fun!! Yours, David Arne Sisson