The Revolution in LaGrange County, Indiana

The following message appeared on Rootsweb mailing lists recently:

The LaGrange de Lafayette Chapter of the DAR will honor Revolutionary War soldier DAVID COWAN with a grave marker presentation and ceremony in 2011. Seeking descendants of David and Esther Smith Cowan to invite them to the grave marking ceremony and reception.
David and Esther Cowan moved to LaGrange County, Indiana in 1835. They had the following children: Smith who married Sarah Teft; Esther who married an Aldrich; Celinda who married a Pray; Elisha who married Elmina Tucker; John who married Sarah Harding; Jonathan; Phoebe who married Enoch Leighton; Lucy; Amy Angel who married Curtis Harding; and Marenus. Also the McClaskey, Crampton and Cook families can be counted as descendants along with Aldrich, Pray, Harding and Leighton.
David Cowan was born 1765 and died July 24, 1851. Esther Smith Cowan was born 1767 and died March 22, 1848. They are buried in Eagley Cemetery, Van Buren Twp, LaGrange County, IN along with children Phoebe & Enoch Leighton and John Cowan.
DAR chapter is also seeking any Cowan family history, stories and anecdotes about the family. Please contact Barbara Yurs at 260-562-3375 or bayurs@embarqmail.com or Sharon at sharonboyerbates@aol.com for further details.

A check of the DAR Genealogical Research System shows him with the surname Cowing and a birth year of 1764, but these are small differences and the other information tallies. Evidently he was a New Englander.

Methodology Monday with upstate New York in Allen County Public Library

Plenty of Midwesterners came from, or through, New York -- and in doing so created multiple migraines for their descendants who have to cope with a gigantic state that has few statewide record sets for the 19th century (always excepting those wonderful state censuses).

John Beatty, writing in the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center's monthly e-zine "Genealogy Gems" for November 30, offers an introduction to using the 185-roll microfilm collection of New York State DAR transcribed records, largely of cemeteries, vital records, and Bible records. (If the direct link doesn't work, start here. This is the genealogy center's microtext catalog, for which their elegant new AquaBrowser catalog is NOT a substitute!) Back issues through 2009 and a free electronic subscription form are also available here.

You do want to read this article before jumping in, as the arrangement and indexing is not quite state of the art. But sooner or later, you're going to have to crack a New York family. Why not now?