When researching genealogy it is always amazing what you find. I have a 9th Great Grandmother, Margaret Scott nee Stevenson who was hanged as a witch on Gallows Hill, Salem, MA in September 22, 1692. A 5th great grandfather, William "Post" Wescott who carried the first mail between Boston and Portland and was employed by George Washington during the Revolutionary war to carrying dispatches. In 2007 I discovered that I have a 10th Cousin who I had know for over 20 years. Up until then we never even knew we were related. Just goes to show you that the more research you do and the broader your family file gets the easier it is to find relatives. Finding such a distant relative has allowed me to add more Family information to my web site.
I discovered that determining the County and State of many records was not as easy as you would think. Many Cities and Towns changed their names not once but many times. There are many Cities and Towns in my data base that I do not know in what County and State they are located, some I know the State but nothing else. Another problem that I ran into is Cities and Towns in Maine (ME), New Hampshire (NH), Massachusetts (MA) , Rhode Island (RI) and Connecticut (CT) were all once part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, therefore all of the Cities and Town were once part of Massachusetts. This in it self may not seem like a problem but there are many Cities and Towns in those state with the same name. Here are a few of the ones that I have encountered: Newbury (MA, NH), Bradford (MA, ME, NH), Salisbury (MA, NH), Topsfield (MA, ME,), Ipswich (MA, NH), Monroe (ME, NH), Webster (MA, ME, NH), Lisbon (CT, ME, NH), Newcastle (ME, NH), Hampden (MA, ME,), Auburn (MA, ME,), and many others.
There are even churches with the same name, North Church it is either in Boston, MA or Portsmouth, NH. Along with this there many Towns that have changed there name and I have no idea of the state that they are located in. There is a good chance that they changed their name but I cannot find the new name or it may just be township that is not listed. Here are some of there: Township 31, ME, Twentywood, MT, Canyon, WA, New Marian, IN, Newberry, MA, Freeze, ID and Isle Haught, ME.
Shortly after I first posted the above introduction I received the following from a cousin of mine: I was just scanning your web site, and found where you wrote about old towns. Freeze, ID is where my great-grandfather, Samuel Harrison, died. They moved his coffin to Potlatch, ID. To my knowledge, it no longer exists. It was near Potlatch, ID. Canyon, WA is the same. There is a tiny store with an old gas pump in the area where Canyon used to be. Don and I were there when we were trying to find my mother's cousin's ranch. Mother was born in what was called Canyon, but it was in what we call "the Palouse Country" of Washington, and the whole area consists of large ranches. It is called the bread basket of the country because of all the grain production.
As you can see when you put out information there is always somebody that know something about it. Because of the internet genealogy is a whole lot easier that it use to be. Thanks for all the help everybody on line has given me. Good hunting!