Come spring, my sister in Rochester will be making a trip to the Albany area. She has offered to go by the cemetery and photograph the graves. I have the locations from the old Family Group Record that was created by a friend of my aunt's back in the 80s.

One thing I notice that is interesting is that Mary is buried in "The Cullen Plot" and William, Anna, and Jane are buried in "The Armstrong Plot." Perhaps Mary's death at such a young age had something to do with it. From the city directories, I see that William and Mary were living with her father at the time. If I had to hazard a guess (which I hate doing in genealogy because I like proof) I would imagine that at that young age, they hadn't even thought about final arrangements.

While she is there, I'll have her see what other info she can get. The family group record makes reference to several pieces of data from the burial records, so I'm guessing (again) that I already have everything that is there, but you never know; perhaps she thought she "had enough" information and moved on.

The only thing that bothers me about death/burial records is that they are like the census: you never know who answered the questions and if they actually knew. I have an ancestor on another line whose death certificate says he was born in 1850, but the 1850 census shows him as already being 3 years old. That's why I'd love to find marriage records because that's the only thing I can think of where the individuals actually answered for themselves. Some else on this board checked the city records and found no marriages for William Henry Armstrong; she said she would check the state records to see if they exist there.

I did manage to contact someone at the diocese who gave me her personal email address, so perhaps she is a friendly soul in a sea of uncooperativeness (if that's a word.) I think the church may be my last hope of getting any farther back on that line.

What can I get from property records? I've never dealt with them before. Any interesting tidbits that are tucked away as there are in some other records? I have the family's addresses over the years from the city directories so the records should be easy to locate.

As to immigration, nothing is immediately apparent for the Cullens. According to what I have, the parents, Edward and Ann, both of which were very common names, were born in Ireland, but I can't find anything online that shows them arriving together, but as my wife pointed out, it wasn't unusual for the husband to come first and get things set up. According to those same records, Mary and her sister Bridget were born in NY, although I have seen 2 family trees that say Mary was born in Ireland.

The Armstrong family on the other hand is a giant question mark. Half my sources say William was born in New York, and the other half say New Jersey. There are also conflicting reports on his parents. (Hope the table format stays intact when I post this.)

Census Year Birth Year Born in Father Born Mother Born

1880 Abt 1861 NY Ireland Ireland
1900 Apr 1862 NJ Ireland NY
1910 Abt 1861 NJ Ireland Ireland
1920 Abt 1861 NY Ireland Ireland
1930 Abt 1860 NJ NJ NJ

I have tried to no avail to locate his family by looking for sequential census records in 1860, 1870, and 1880. My thought was that if I could find a family with a son named William Armstrong in 1860 and 1870, then find the same family in 1880 that was minus the son, I would have a good lead. Unfortunately, I can't even locate most of the Armstrong families in both 1860 and 1870 that would provide me with a fairly certain baseline.

Rick Armstrong