Woods and Weeds

Friday, July 29,2011

We’ve gotten a little behind on our posting.  Our geneology search got a little more difficult the further east we went.  We learned in South Dakota that we could get plat maps from the library and go from there.  Some of  the libraries in New York didn’t have any idea what a plat map was.  (For those of you who don’t know, a plat map shows how the land was surveyed and who owns each piece.  If you get the old maps, you can find where people lived.  They did have one plat map in Richfield Springs;  someone had cut out pages on the other ones, so they were sent out.)

We were looking for land and cemeteries and not having much luck, so we pulled into a driveway out in the country and I knocked on the door and told them what we were looking for.  It turned out the man, Mr. Purcell, had a grandmother who was a Tunnicliffe.  He had done geneology search himself and shared a lot of information with us, He even copied it for us.  He told us where to find a marker for John Tunnicliffe’s estate.  We found the marker, but it is now woods with   a lot of underbrush. There were some wild strawberries.  We found a cemetery map in Cooperstown, but couldn’t locate the cemetery.  Frustrating.  We checked out some other old cemeteries, but no Tunnicliffes. 

Okay, we spent two days trying to find Tunnicliffes.  Found out the counties changed borders and names.  The towns had the most beautiful Victorian homes.  The views were fantastic.  It was rather like stepping back in time. 

We decided to spend Thursday looking for 1^st Samuel Hickinbotham in Utica.  We had to wait for the volunteer in the geneology department at the library.   She was pretty useless.  Christy knew more about searching sites on the computer than she did.  We did find Samuel with three children in the 1840 census.  That was about it.  We were pretty bummed that we couldn’t find any more.  Guess we’ll have to do more of it long distance. 

We kind of ran out of steam last night and decided to head out.  Had trouble deciding whether to head for Florida or  Missouri.  Missouri won out.  Christy will fly home to Orlando from St. Peters.  We checked out this morning  and are staying overnite in the middle of Ohio.  We’ll do a little sight seeing before getting on the road tomorrow. 

Blessings,  Ruth