Question: Mark Heiman wrote:

I recently purchased an ornate family bible containing marriage records for Chester C. Merrill and Cynthia H. Burrows (m. 1858), for their children George, Ernest, Sadie, Walter, and Lillian, and 11 photos including 4 tintypes, presumably of the same family. I'd love to reunite it with s! ome descendants who would appreciate it. Please pass this information along to anyone you thing would be interested.

Answer: Mark:

Thank you for posting this query.  We checked our database and found that we have the lineage of  Chester C (8) and Cynthia. It is Chester C (8),  George (7), Shubael (6), George (5),  Jonathan (4),  Daniel (3),  John (2), immigrant Nathaniel (1). More details are available.  Unfortunately, we don't have any info on the families of their children, and have had no correspondence from anyone working on this line. The last record we have on this family is the 1880 census, when they were in Sanford, Broome, NY.

For twenty five years we have been trying to database the Merrill/Merrell surname nationwide from the original immigrants right down to the present day for all the immigrant lines. So far we have info on over 60,000 Merrill males, plus their wives and daughters in our database, but we estimate that there are well over 100,000 so we have a long way to go, and we need and appreciate all the help we can get, particularly with the later generations. We use this database strictly to try and help folks trace their Merrill roots.  While our database is not internet searchable, we will be glad to search it for anybody and share what we find at no cost. All that we ask is that folks share their Merrill data with us, so we can expand the database, and do a better job of helping solve Merrill lineage problems.  We would be interested in the details of any information on this family contained in the bible to add to our database.

With such a large database, we have no storage space to collect bibles or pictures of Merrills other than our own direct line.  We will, however, keep your letter on file and if we get correspondence relating to this line, we will have them contact you.

Howard and Jean Merrill