Joseph ? Parsons. Nancy ? Eliot ? Elliot ? Elliott ? Eliott ? This is my first week participating in the 52_ancestors, and my brick wall concerns the ancestors of my great grandfather Nelson Milton Parsons, who often signed his name N M Parsons, and I have also seen him referred to as M N Parsons. (link to
https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Parsons-Family-Tree-9565). Nelson Milton Parsons is reported by all census (including family member's reports to census) as being born in New York, perhaps in Dutchess County, and perhaps (as reported in one census) on October 23, 1823. However, there are no county or state birth records in New York for this time period. I made fruitless contacts with the local genealogical society, local library, local Methodist Church which I believe he would have belonged to. In his travels West (by the northern route, well documented) he passed through Pleasant Valley, Marquette County, Wisconsin, where he met his future wife (Aramintha Lamira Warner) and lived in her father's household, according to the 1850 US Federal Census. A woman believed to be his mother, named Nancy Parsons (transcribed as Passons), is listed on that census, but no mention of an appropriate age person for his father. I have Nelson Milton Parsons' death certificate, from Modesto, Stanislaus County, California, which lists his birthplace as New York State.
