So, while playing with my Ancestry.com website, I discover the “Message Boards”…seem to have every imaginable topic. So, of course I type in “John Hegeman Cornell”. A Cornell genealogist (one of many, i would find out), writes me that my “Flushing, Queens roots and the name “Hegeman” scream out “Cornells from Flushing”, which he meant was part of the family descended from Thomas Cornell and Rebecca Briggs through their son Richard who came to Flushing, and apparently bought it.
Now, Ancestry.com has a sort of Google device. You type in a name and all sorts of options appear. I choose a record for Richard Cornell of Flushing. The document is the 1860 (and later the 1870) Census for Flushing. Richard, a harness maker, appears with his wife Eleanor and their five children: one of them is John H Cornell, born circa 1857. Sounds plausible. My grandfather was born in 1882. John Hegeman would have been 25. Extremely circumstantial? My thoughts entirely.
forensickingfamily 