[tiggerella]

I lost my dad to lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes) in 1980 and, to feel closer to him, started researching our family tree. I found a great book on the Dow family line called "The Book of Dow", which listed my great-grandfather as the son of an Alexander Dow in Palermo, Maine "by conjecture", but I have since found Alexander Dow's family records and my great-grandfather wasn't his son.

According to my grandfather in an interview in a newspaper the year Grampy hit 90 years old, James Parker Dow came to Maine from Chelsea, Massachusetts, met Susan Lovina Belden, and they were married in Palermo, Maine in 1870. Family rumor has it that his parents were Samuel and Roxanne Lamont and that he was adopted into the Dow family.

He passed away in an accident in the mill pond where he was working in 1876, and while I have located his unmarked grave, I haven't yet managed to find proof of his birthplace (mostly because a huge fire wiped out the records that would have existed when he applied for a marriage license). Since it's been 28 years of searching so far, I would like to ask any members of this forum who live in the Chelsea, MA area if they might be willing to check into old records. Here in Maine, the records for adoptions from the 1800's are now public record, but I simply can't afford to go to Chelsea to search.

If you are willing to have a look for me and need more information than is included above, please let me know. I do this kind of thing on a volunteer basis myself in the area where I live, but that volunteer group doesn't have anyone in Chelsea.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions (and before you suggest this, I've already become a member of Ancestry.com twice, but the records I need don't seem to have been transposed onto the internet).