[Reply started during family Xmas gathering in WA, and my response got lowered to the bottom of my gmail list. FORTUNATELY for me, I decided to clean up my gmail INBOX and rediscovered your email.]
Michael,
I am so excited by your email. I have no information about my Samuel Carney before the information in a book by Harriett Marr Wheeler, concerning suggestions of a NJ connection. You give possible reason to take the family search seriourly again. My Samuel married Eleanor Marr, daughter of William, in Upper Mt. Bethel, Northampton, PA in 1787. My direct line goes from their son, John Carney, b. that same year. We lose him between 1800 and I think 1818 when he buys [or he and his father buy] Holland Land Grant land in about 1818 in Niagara, NY. They were up in the ridge road near the Pekin cut road. I happened by the actual old place where the original family cemetery is just feet from an old stone cottage with some connection to the original Carney family. It was an amazing find on a bright sunny, freezing cold day. The owner said to meet me out back, while he opened the gate, there was a 2000's above ground pool surrounded by stepping stones of old tombstones leading to some original community tombstones.
The Carneys of some connection had owned the stone house, but the oldest CARNEYs burials must have been removed with the cutting through of a road for the early cars to travel up the big hill. It is called the Pekin Cut and the the existing house was owned by John McSwan, I believe, in early 2000s.
[Jump to 4/4/2011, and I'm back near Kalamazoo, MI where John, son Samuel and SC's M-I-L Keyes were part of a group buying land patents in 1830s in Kalamazoo County. ]
Thank you for the new shreds of information on my Lost Carney Family!
Mary Carney Hodges
Apr 4, 2011