Tompkins County - Day 3

Tuesday, 1 July 2008

Today we visited Cornell University and looked through some archive material. No luck with the deaths and marriages stored on 8 x 11 cards catalogued by publications in local papers primarily. We did order two boxes of papers that indexed both Abbott and Strong and we will review those tomorrow when they are delivered.
We then went to the Tompkins County History Center and looked through books and history of the county. One interesting finding was a map of the county from 1853. It lists families and locations on the map. We found Wid. Strong in the Danby area and will try to locate the property when we drive down there in the next couple of days. We also returned to the County Clerk's office to search for David Foster who is noted on the deed from Mary Strong to Electa Hayward in 1853. We found a title transfer in 1835 along with the document of Mary's sale. Of interest is the location of the Foster family in Danby. Milton Bostwick Foster married Rosanna Strong in 1840 and Moses Stilson Foster married Susan Strong in 1845. The Elder Foster, John, married Lorinda Treadwell in Malahide, Elgin Ontario in 1815 and it is these families along with Jasper, Martha, Mary and Reuben Jr that move to Ontario.
We also learned from the local historian, that the land in Danby was quite poor, even worse than Newfield and it was difficult to make a living. It may be that Mary received the land that she sold from the Fosters when they moved to Canada and then followed them with Jasper and family. They all also seem to move on to Michigan later since many are buried there.
No luck on Reuben's parents and I am not holding out a lot of hope for that. There are a lot of Strongs in the area and it is likely that there are some brothers but it is difficult to make the connections. We hope to talk to a couple more historians this week. The records here are not good and it is complicated by the amalgamation of towns and counties during this time. Spencer, Cayuta and Newfield all overlap and merge. Many records were lost or burned. We will continue the search.