Those Darn Smiths

One of the blocks in the Rippey lineage is the Smiths. Elizabeth Smith was the wife of Joseph Rippey and thus my great, great grandmother. But she was born in 1805 and died in 1838 so we can't use any census data to get at her. William Smith was her father and Leonard Smith may have been her brother. William was an early settler in Ontario county, showing up in the early 1790's. How to trace him?

I can't report much progress, but I did go back to the Milliken history of Ontario County found that "William Smith, Jr." was there in 1793 in Seneca township. So now I can guess (and it's not much more) that William Smith's father was also William Smith, who I've added to the ancestry.com tree.

The census report for 1800 shows 4 Smiths, one group of William, Leonard and Josiah (that is, on adjacent lines) and a separate entry for another William Smith. Interpreting the entries is hard, because they don't seem to relate to the printed form.

Anyhow, I've added the excerpts for the early settling of Seneca and the forming of the No. 9 church (so called, because it was located in township no. 9, of the first range of the Phelps/Gorham tract) to the website and I've added Jean's extract of the William Smith will and the purchase of land from James Latta in 1791.