Researchers, you can get ‘where’ from here: www.placenames.com

You learn something new every day. A recent query from dear friend and former Family Ties columnist Connee Jellison, printed below, sent me scurrying to Stanley Bearce Attwood’s “Length and Breadth of Maine” to pin down Bloxton Meadow.

In my lifetime in Maine, I’d never heard of that locale. Attwood assigned Bloxton Meadow to Waltham, and 8SD BPP. The Web site www.placenames.com lists Bloxton Meadow as a swamp in Hancock County.

The Web site offers the opportunity to check out the location on a variety of maps, placing Bloxton Meadow not far from Fletcher’s Landing and Graham Lake.

Not every nook and cranny is listed on the Web site, but you certainly can look up lots of places. By clicking on “advanced search” you can specify a state if you like.

I tried out Jackman Corner, which I know to be a corner of Sangerville on the road to Dexter. The Web site accurately placed it by Route 23.

Next I looked up Purling, referred to in a 1907 document by my great-great-great-grandmother Mary (Payne) Bray Jenks as the village where she was born in Cairo, Greene County, N.Y.

I couldn’t find Purling in atlases, but www.placenames.com located it for me. Place Names bills itself as “a gazetteer to find countries, cities, towns, villages, mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, islands and other geographic and administrative place names with their location, latitude, longitude and elevation.”

Currently the U.S. is the only country, but more are to be added.

It’s fun to browse the stacks in libraries because you never know what’s going to turn up. Libraries acquire new books, and sometimes authors will send a copy of their newest work to a library where they know the patrons will be interested.

I often take review copies of genealogy or local history books to Bangor Public Library or another facility where I know they will get good use.

If you haven’t used the local history section at Ellsworth Public Library very recently, do check out what’s available there. Recently I took down about 100 genealogy and history books, volumes that BPL already had, to Ellsworth for the Allen Whitmore collection.

The books came from the collections of two genealogists I remember with great love, Marjorie Marsh Quigg and Agnes Higgins Ames, whose families had asked me to find good homes for the books.

Both ladies were longtime members of the Mayflower Society and various historical and genealogical societies, not to mention superb speakers and correspondents who shared their findings near and far.

Agnes got me interested in joining the Daughters of the American Revolution, and I often described Marjorie as “the best thing I ever came across at Bangor Public Library.”

It did my heart good to hear from Charlene Clemons at Ellsworth Public Library that already she has heard from a genealogist about a puzzle that was solved thanks to one of the books given in memory of Marjorie and Agnes.

By the way, Bangor and Ellsworth are among the libraries that have their collections online, so check them out.

3357. JELLISON-FLETCHER-STRONG. These first two family lines I have worked on for more than 50 years, and have had the input from other researchers, yet the last name remains a lost piece of the puzzle. Stephen Strong is closely related to the Jellisons and Fletchers, but the connection is never listed in the numerous deeds or sales of land. He is sometimes included in the deed “and Martha Jellison, his wife, in her right, and as heirs of Stephen Strong.” This active and apparently well-to-do frontiersman also bought and sold land at the small settlement at Bloxton Meadow in Hancock County, where relatives of the Jellisons and Fletchers began to settle, the family names being Flood, Hopkins and Hapworth. Am hoping fellow genealogists will come up with what I am really searching for, the name of the first wife of William Carr Fletcher, and more about the family life of William Jellison and his wife, Martha Hopkins. Connee Jellison, 80 Mount Desert St. Apt. 1, Bar Harbor, ME 04609.

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or send e-mail, familyti@bangordailynews.net.