According to a fellow family researcher, Henry Osborne was (still is, if you want to think about it this way) the son of a Stephen Osborn born in East Windsor CT in 1794. This Stephen married Polly Parsons in 1816. They migrated to Ossian NY with his father, Elijah. In 1836, Stephen divorced Polly and married a Sue Hungerford. In 1838, they moved to Michigan, taking three sons from Stephen's first family by Polly; all except Henry.
This always struck me as fishy. Divorce wasn't that common back then. He took all her sons with him except Henry? Wither went Polly? There's no record of her until 1870, when she's living with Henry in Livonia NY. The census records that she was born in Connecticut. So Bob went looking for a Stephen Osborn who married a Polly from CT at about the time Henry was born, 1814-1818. Thanks to impeccable record keeping by Connecticut, he found one in which names and dates fit. And this Stephen went west to where? Ossian NY. He's there in the census of 1820 and 1830.
It's the perfect genealogical storm of right names, right dates, right migration pattern; right neck of the upstate New York woods. I thought he was right. I've spent the past couple of years tracing Osbornes from East Windsor CT, and I've grown to know and love them.
Now I find out that Polly Parsons Osborne died in 1837. So she couldn't have been the Polly Osborne living with Henry in 1870 (unless they had her propped up in the corner with Jerusha). Sad, but rather a relief, since I didn't like to think about my poor great-great-great grandmother wandering around the wilds of western New York state after being divorced by a husband who then married a younger woman and took their kids to Michigan. And it certainly puts Stephen in less of an asshole light.
I am officially hot on the trail of a new Stephen.
East Windsor Osbornes, I may run into you later.