Cousins finding me

One of the great things about genealogy blogs is that what you post is indexed by Google and other search engines.

The other day I received an email from a Bell descendant of James and Cornelia Bell of Henderson, Jefferson County, NY (James was born in 1777, died 1836). I had posted a note back in October about a deed that named his children here, and my correspondent had found me. He had more information about the Bell family, including a daughter that I had not previously identified.

He pointed me to a Rootsweb WorldConnect database, posted in August 2006, that contained James and cornelia Bell, and documented another daughter's line. It also provided birth dates for James and Cornelia, and identified her maiden name as Bresee. It also said that James Bell was from Scotland, and that they were married in Schodack, Rensselaer County, NY.

So I'm on the hunt for Bresee families (Breese, Bries, Beece, etc) in the Rensselaer/Columbia Counties area in the 1750 to 1800 time frame. I have found some decent leads, but no tie of Cornelia Bresee to a set of parents. It looks like these people were of Dutch extraction and immigrated in the late 1600's or early 1700's.

If James Bell is from Scotland, then this is my first known Scottish ancestor. I have hoped for Scottish, Welsh and Irish ancestors for a long time, and now my hopes are coming to a partial fruition.

There is another lesson for me here - I need to check the Rootsweb WorldConnect database (and the Ancestry member databases too) more often for my "problem children." I last checked on James Bell with a wife Cornelia back in 2005 and had not checked since.