I think I need to go back to genealogy class 101. I've been desperately looking for
the parents of my Orvis Chapman (b. 1811) for quite a few years. Today I got an e-mail
from somebody who saw my Chapman pictures on the Lorain Co., Ohio web page. She wanted to
know if her Asher Chapman and mine were the same person. No, they aren't. But her
Asher is the right age to be the father of my Orvis. And he was in Lorain Co. in 1830,
1840 & 1850, where Orvis lived. I had picked Asher up on the census and had the names
of all his children except for two who were on the 1830 census. Well, since the male
child was born between 1815 and 1820 I just casually dismissed this family as a
possibilty. It never occured to me that Orvis might have already left the family home by
1830 and therefore wouldn't have been on the census with them. Or that he might have
been born four years later than when I think he was. His wife was born in 1816. He could
easily have been born in 1815.
It looks like I need to check out this family further. Anybody know anything about Asher
Chapman, b. abt 1796 in Massachusetts? His wife's name was Polly. They lived in
Amherst Twp. (Lorain Co.) The county history says that Asher (spelled Ashar) came from
New Marlborough, Massachusetts and that he arrived in Sheffield (Ohio) in October 1815.
Marsha
(banging her head against her genealogy box)