Many Knowlton family researchers are not aware that the vast majority of information on anyone born say 1775 and after was obtained by correspondence with families in the late 1800’s. In other words, the Reverend Charles Stocking and his successor in the project George Henry Knowlton and their assistants just sat and wrote thousands of letters to Knowlton surnamed people they found in various directories of the time. While some Knowltons ignored the request for information for one reason or another (invasion of privacy, suspicious it was a scheme to get money, etc.) many responded. Some Knowltons sent one sheet of paper containing everything they knew. Others shipped large parcels of information that they had spent considerable amount of time gathering from relatives. All in all it created a mountain of random information to be sorted, collated, typed up and printed. As daunting a project as that was they did it. But what they didn’t do is check this information against town birth, marriage and death records, census records or any other records. There were exceptions, however. Some “correspondents” as Stocking called them visited or wrote town clerks and got accurate information that they passed on to Stocking and that information was published. Census records, so vital to us today, were not easy to consult in Stocking’s time because first you had to go to Washington, D.C. and then, because they were not indexed, you had to already know in which town to look.

And, as you might imagine, the information sent to Stocking varied considerably as to accuracy. Some was very accurate based on detailed family records copied by a diligent Knowlton and sent to Stocking. Much information is off the mark a little or a lot based on faulty memories of family stories or just plain guessing under the guise of trying to be helpful. Also, some families would deliberately not provide information on family members who were, shall we say, less than perfect. Keep in mind that “less than perfect” to them might mean the relative joined a rival religious group or stole off in the dead of night and joined the gold rush to California.

So, while Stocking is definitely the place to start in researching your Knowlton ancestor, everything has to be verified with original source documents. Perhaps the erroneous Belchertown information may have sprung from information provided by a “correspondent” who meant well but had a faulty recollection of family stories.