Fairfield Connecticut and my Cooley family

Rather than rewriting this entire blog post, I will add the outcome Mike found later.  His father had been adopted and when Mike found his father's birth father and did the research on the birth father's lines, Mike found that indeed he was descended from Benjamin Franklin Carey and Ben's first wife Mariah Ketchum.

So Mike definitely has Carey, Cooley, etc in his DNA.  So quite honestly the reader does not need to read the below information.

I was writing to Mike Tillman about our connections and decided to brush up on what I know about Mike's ancestors.  In my mind I was sooooooo sure that Mike had Cooleys in his tree.  Much to my surprise, when I pulled up his tree on Ancestry there are NO Cooleys in his tree.  So this magic chromosome that I am looking at comes down from another family in the area around Fairfield Connecticut that married into my Cooley family or there is a Cooley ancestor in Mike's family that he hasn't found yet.   So as a part of getting ready to go on this trip, I am going to do some thinking about Mikes' family.  From Mike's ancestry tree I find these people in Fairfield Connecticut.

Sarah Reynolds and her husband Josiah Henry Smith.



Sarah Reynolds' mother, Sarah Blackman and her husband Amos Smith



Sarah Blackman's mother, Sarah Brown, and Sarah's father, Josiah Blackman.  Josiah's father was  Joseph Blackman who was born in 1675.  Joseph does not show up in these pictures.



I do not see any other surnames on Mike's tree that are found in the area around Fairfield Connecticut.  So these will be the names that I am looking at while I am in that area:Smith, Reynolds, Brown, Blackman....Oh, wait I found one more.  Josiah Smith born 1803  has a wife named Betsey Lockwood.  Mike has very little information about Betsey's ancestors....could she have a Cooley in her tree?  This will be fun!

Ok, I woke up this morning thinking about the next step.  Next I look at Terry Lee's tree and read the Jacobus book to see if I can find Cooley clues.