Sunday, June 5, 2016

Greatest Find May 2016- Saturday Challenge


Randy Seaver is away this week, but he sent the following challenge to us in his Genea Musings blog:
For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:

1)  I am away at the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree this weekend, having too much fun (I hope!).


2)  What was your best genealogy "research find" in May 2016?  It could be a record, it could be a photograph, etc.  Whatever you judge to be your "best."

Most of my work in May has been collecting information from some published sources and getting them arranged properly in my database along with a little bit of work with documenting gravestones on Find A Grave.

While at the New York State Library in Albany at the first of the month, I did look in one book, which gave me no information on my family. However, one line from that book might have been the greatest find for me. Published by a historical society that has done much research in the area (part of Columbia County, New York), their opinion of the records helps support conclusions I have come to:

“Very few descendants of the early settlers are still found in the area and because of the loss of early records it is impossible to tell where they lived…” [1]
 
Page 70
One of those apparent early settlers is a man named Ebenezer Wooster and his family. This quote offers up a good explanation of why we can find him in early census records and little else in the area. Other mentions of early settlers on this page state they came from Milford, Connecticut. Ebenezer came from one side or the other of the Housatonic River, having appeared in both the towns of Milford and Stratford.

It is just a few lines on one page of a book and they don’t even mention my family’s name. However, this further supports some theories that I have been developing on the family and helps complete the explanation of lack of records on them. Therefore, it is probably the greatest find of May 2016 for me.



[1] Roeliff Jansen Historical Society, A history of the Roeliff Jansen area : Ancram-Copake-Gallatin-Hillsdale, Columbia County, New York, ([Place of publication not identified] : Roeliff Jansen Historical Society, 1975.), p. 70.


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