I am on my favorite soapbox - but I think I may have got somewhere. I still can't connect all the dots, but I had someone resend me the write-up on John Goodell, the man living in Allegan Co. NY who raised his "niece"'s little girl. I suspect that he raised his father's niece's little girl - the article is really confusing. That would make her his cousin's dau. The girl's name was Eliza FERGUSON... like in the Hannah (Goodell) Ferguson that married Warner Fay Chaffee, Lyman's uncle. The article insists that John's father Nathaniel was born in VT, as do all census entries of the family. If Hannah and Nathaniel are indeed out of the line I think they are, all of them are from Pomfret, Windham Co. CT. Could have the birth's been registered in Pomfret, even though the baby was actually delivered somewhere else? I suspect that Nathaniel is the Nathaniel b. 1776 to Nathaniel and Sarah (Parkhurst) Goodell or the one b. 1782 to Richard and Mercy (Parkhurst) Goodell. The family was in the process of migrating from CT to VT at that time. In fact, Nathaniel and Sarah married in Mass in 1775 and Nathaniel 1776 was their first child, b. VT. The write-up says that John was born in 1824 in Palmyra Co. NY, and that they removed there shortly after the War of 1812. I checked and guess how far it is between Palmyra and Canandiagua? 13 miles from town center to town center. I should have Palmyra deed info in a while. (Canandiagua was were Benjamin was circa the same time, right?) I checked the 1820 census for Palmyra - really the census index. There are two Goodell's there, Nathaniel and Morey (sic - I think it's Mercy). I suspect that Mercy is a widow at this point, so the Nathaniel could be her son, or the older Nathaniel who married the Parkhurst. They removed to Erie Co. NY circa 1836, by which time, the Tryon's were in Western NY also, in Chemung/Tioga Co. area. Then they moved to OH, where they met the Goodell's, but from the article, it's hard to tell if they met them for the first time, or joined them there after a separation. These Cooley's are from VT, Royal and Sabra (Austin) Cooley. (This connection is why I am interested in Tryon-Cooley marraiges.) Does anybody else have any other connections to these names elsewhere in their lines? Vicki