Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Messages on the boards for my Cornelia

I wrote a message titled "Who are the parents of my Cornelia Bresee?" and posted it to:

** Ancestry.com message boards for Bresee, Brazie, Brazee and Breese surnames

** Ancestry.com message boards for Columbia and Rensselaer Counties, New york

** Genforum message boards for Bresee, Brazie and Brazee surnames

** Genforum message boards for Columbia and Rensselaer Counties, New
York

The message reads:

"I recently found out that one of my ancestors is Cornelia Bresee, born 5 Dec 1780 in NY, died 1840 in Jefferson County NY; she married James Bell (born 7 Aug 1777 in Scotland, died 1839 in Jefferson county NY) in Schodack (Rensselaer county NY) in about 1797. Their children were Sarah, Polly, Nancy, Betsy, David, James, Oren and Lucinda. Some of this data is from a WorldConnect database "sprague family" submitted by Lance Sprague. I believe that the birth dates for Cornelia and James probably came from some sort of family record.

"I've been digging through as much Bresee (Bressee, Bresie, Brezie, Brazie, Brazee, Brasy, Brissee, Brussie, etc) data as I can find on the Internet. It appears that one of the major centers for this surname in the late 1700s was Columbia County NY, just south of Rensselaer County (and just across from Schodack). There is also a concentration of Bries (and Brees, Breese, Breeze, etc) families in Rensselaer County and very few are in Columbia county.

"Does anyone have my Cornelia Bresee (born 1780) in their databases? Does anyone have a list of Bresee (and variant spellings) families in the Rensselaer/Columbia county area in about 1780-1800? If so, who are likely parents of Cornelia (some can be eliminated due to age, marriage date or other children born in 1780)?"

Is this an effective message for the message boards? How could it have been improved? Where else should I post it?

1 comment:

Christina | AmiExpat.com said...

I like to put a time and place in the title, but Bresee is not that common a surname so it will probably get read by anyone who is researching that name and comes across the post. For me, some of my family surnames are so common that I usually only read the inquiries that have something more in the title. Title example: "Parents of GINKENS, Jesse, VA>IA, 1828-1893?"

I also often post queries to the local genealogy society websites of whatever area the person lived in and on the USGenWeb county site.