Well here's a new twist:
I edited the cCursor class in cDataEnv.vcx and changed the (public) property of 'cursorsource' by deleting it's value of "..\..\Projmgr6\h.dbf". Save and closed the class.

Reopened it and "..\..\Projmgr6\h.dbf" was back. I made sure that cDataEnv.vcx was not Read-Only. What's going on here?

Starting in my project folder, if I modify the a class in cDataEnv with a 'cursorsource' property and clear it, save it, close it and come back into it. the property is '..\..\..\MyProjectFolder\h.dbf'

If I cd to the Root directory and repeat the process it changes to '..\..\..\h.dbf'

If I cd to \mmortals\common30\libs and repeat it is now 'h.dbf'

Is this a framework bug/problem/enhancement or a VFP one?