Genealogy Questions

 Many of you have asked that I take some time to more fully explain a few things which have cause problems in your research into your family's past.  For those of you who are not interested in this subject, please bear with us. Perhaps you  just might happen to find something that will be of interest to you later in your life.

We will begin at the beginning to ensure that we are all on the same page in regard to our terminology as words, as well as things, are not always as they may first seem.

There are two distinct objectives or goals which must be carefully considered before it is possible for one to succeed in  research of this type.  There is no right or wrong choice; however, you are the absolute only person who can decide which choice is the best one for you to make as it must be based upon what you want to achieve.

1. Genealogy is the study of one particular family.  In the United States one normally begins with  the immigrant ancestor and works to the present while documenting all of the children in each and every   generation as one progress from the past to the present. A good numbering system is crucial for the         success of this type of project.

2. Family history is the study of one person and of all of that person's ancestors. The number of individuals one must deal with doubles with each generation.  For instance, you and only you are the first generation.  Generation two is composed of your own two parents. Generation three is composed of your four grandparents, etc. Normally, it now takes about fifteen - eighteen generation for one to go back to the immigrant ancestor who came into the colonies, which for many of us is at Jamestown.  This means that you would be dealing with thousands of ancestors which all contributed to who you are via your genetic makeup.

Let's look at this and see how it works so that when I tell you to start with yourself, you actually pay attention.
Gen 1- 1x1= 1
Gen 2- 2x2= 4
Gen 3- 2x4= 8
Gen 4- 2x8= 16
Gen 5- 2x16= 32
Gen 6- 2x32= 64
Gen 7- 2x64= 128
Gen 8- 2x128= 256
Gen 9- 2x256= 512
Gen 10- 2x512=1,024
Gen 11- 2x1,024= 2,048
Gen 12- 2x2,048= 4,096
Gen 13- 2x4,096= 8,192
Gen 14- 2x8,192= 16,384
Gen 15- 2x16,384=32,768
Gen 16- 2x32,768= 65,536
Gen 17- 2x65,536= 131,078
Gen 18- 2x131,078= 262,156
Gen 19- 2x262,156= 524,212
Gen 20- 2x524,212= 1,048,424
Yes, that is correct.  In working back just to eighteen generation in a straight line you will deal with 262,156 people...Now, consider that this is absolutely without any cousins or their' families being added.

And, oh, just for the record, I absolutely do recommend that you do a "Family History" rather than  a "Genealogy" because most folk are more interested in the people who contributed to their very own genetic makeup rather than in bunches of other people who are only very distantly related to them.  If you want all of the work you will accomplish preserved in the future, you most probably should research something that will be of interest to the younger folk in your family.

This is why I will question you when you ask me which is the most important branch of your family for you to work with?  I am not attempting to evade answering your question, but am only trying to get you to understand that each of your own direct ancestors are all, each and every one of them, equally important due to the fact that without any single one of them, you would not be the person you are today.  This is true because each and every single one of them contributed to your very own genetic make up.

And no, it is not necessary for you to  have a computer to organize all of your ancestors. We will get into organization another time, if there is enough interest in the subject.

Now, let's move on to another very important issue.  A source is the reference citing where you obtained the documented proof for each statement that you have made. It positively is NOT the required proof which is required for each statement in either a genealogy or a family history.  For instance, a source might be a book reference or simply a statement made by your aunt telling you that she thought she remembered her  father saying that his parents were married in Rockingham Co., Virginia.

A documented primary proof is a birth certificate, death certificate, marriage record, deed, etc. meaning a legal document involving or made by a particular person when they were alive.

A gravestone, obituary, military record, etc. is considered a secondary proof as it is normally made by someone else.  Bible records may sometimes be considered a bit of both as a person may write the entries for his own marriage and his children's births but normally someone else writes their death entries.

Many of you have asked me exactly what facts are necessary to document.  There are four things: the birth, marriage and death of each individual in each generation PLUS a legal document such as a will, deed or Bible Record that connects each generation to the next one by stating the named person as a son or daughter.

Currently it is considered necessary to completely document with a legal record the first three generations plus each and every connection from the beginning of an application to the ancestor in order to join any lineage society. This brings me to another point -there are literally hundreds of lineage societies, each of which have a different purpose and therefore have different requirements for membership. Normally, the purpose of  each organization is to honor a direct ancestor by documenting the applicant's connection to him/ her and then the life, family and service of that particular ancestor.  This brings us to two more important words: Lineal and Collateral.  Lineal descent is in a straight line. Collateral descent may be via an aunt or uncle's service rather than in a straight or direct line. To the best of my knowledge the UDC [United Daughters of the Confederacy] is the only women's society which now accepts collateral applications.

I wish I could assure you that there was an easier, less time consuming way to  complete a genealogy or family history, but there simply is not.  Many of you are aware that Dr. John W. Wayland started me in research before I was quite eleven years of age.  Those of you who know my daughters, well understand that the long standing joke in our family is that, "Mother wrote books before there were ball point pens!"  Well, while not exactly the truth, its very close as I wrote before ball point pens were easily available in our area.

The Library of Virginia 

And yes, I do remember having to drive to Richmond to the Virginia State Archives in order to simply look at just one census record because that was all that it was possible to accomplish in any one day as there were no copy machines, no microfilm and in reality no really good indexing system by which the library staff could easily honor your request for original material.  But, there was one big plus... if you were a Virginia resident, you could check out a book [if the archives/library had two copies] and then return the copy you borrowed by mail within two weeks.

This now brings me to another question which so many of you have asked, "What's wrong with me using internet services such as Ancestry.com and/or what is the problem with this type of thing?"  Well, to begin with, it is necessary to fully understand that Ancestry.com is a business based upon compilations of what people may think or believes to be true.  It absolutely, positively is not documentation because it does NOT make a copy of the actual court record/document available to you to print to be included in your records.

I know from experience teaching classes that many of you "cheat" because I always catch you at it.  You assume that if fifty people have something recorded on an internet service as being true then it must certainly be so...WRONG..WRONG...WRONG!!!

This simply means that someone wrote down something incorrectly and forty-nine others copied it in hopes that it was correct.  While in reality, this only means that fifty people copied incorrect information because they chose not to take the time to even attempt to document the point in question. A good example of this would be the maiden name of the wife of Abraham Estes who lived in Virginia in the 1650's. There are more than fifty entries on Ancestry.com which cite this woman's maiden name as being Barbara Brock. This is positively wrong information!!!  Abraham Estes was married at least twice and perhaps three time, but never once was he married to a woman named Barbara Brock.  He did marry a woman named Barbara which was an exceedingly common given name at the time. The Brock  surname was assumed to be correct because a novel was written about what someone "thought" Abraham Estes's life might have been like...

One time, just to make this point positively clear to a class full of adult students whom I was teaching who had more or less disbelieved what I had said about using such sites, I  attached the Cherokee National Flag next to the Frazier surname with absolutely no comment.  Without any doubt Frazier is a Scottish/Norman French surname. Please also know that I did not have my own  lineage posted, nor my name nor my own Frazier family connection.  I simply put the Cherokee National Flag near a Frazier surname that was already on the Ancestry.com site.  Before the end of the class period, nearly seventy people had incorporated the Cherokee National Flag into/with their own Frazier family data. My class was absolutely stunned by this fact. I would imagine that many of those who had attached the Cherokee flag to their Frazier ancestors spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the original flag had come from as I promptly removed it before the class period was over.  My students felt that I was "mean" but no one has ever questioned me again concerning this particular point.

With that being said, Ancestry.com does have Federal Census records available on their site.  It is fine for you to use them, but in dealing with Census Records it is imperative to understand and remember that they are not always accurate because during the early years, the census taker rode horseback and stopped at houses in hid given area.  Many times he stayed the night with whomever he was interviewing when dark settled due to the fact that hotels were not available.  If he spend the night he might ask his host about the family who lived across the mountain from him or farther back in the hollow. The person most probably would do his best to get things right but just as you might not know the given names and birth dates of all your neighbors families, most likely this individual also did not know the correct ages or full names.

National Archives - Washington, D.C.

An internet site that is available by subscription that does contains proofs is Fold 3.  This site contains records from the National Archives in Washington, DC.  It was designed primarily to make military records available to anyone who paid a fee.  This site also includes many Native American records which were recorded by the United States Government and some Federal Census Records.

Another thing is that I truly wish that I could tell you is that with perseverance it is possible to find solutions for all of your research problems.  But alas, at this time, even with all of our technology, it is impossible for me to do so.   For example, at the time of the American Revolution there literally were fourteen men named Abraham Morgan which is an uncommon given name in the Morgan family.  Morgan is a Welsh surname meaning most all of these men or their families originated in Wales.  All of these men chose to live relatively close together when they had the whole frontier to chose from. Also, each and every one of these fourteen men were in and out of the same geographic areas. Most, if not all, of these men had Quaker ties.  Most of these men were military leaders in their own right or were very closely related to those who did.  For instance, Daniel Boone's mother was a Morgan and both of his parents were Quakers. Most of these men were dismissed or kicked out of the Quaker church for their military persuasion.

Then, lo and behold, before Virginia declared war on Great Britain, one Abraham Morgan was tried for being a Tory. This man was given, "thirty-nine lashes for being an ignorant man with small children".  From that time forth, there are multiple statements each saying that each branch of Morgan family are unrelated to any other by that surname in the colonies.

After fifty plus years of research, I can tell you all of the parents of the Abraham Morgans.  I can tell you who each man married, but still after fifty plus years of work, I am unable to state conclusively whose children belong to which couple.  By process of elimination, which does works in most cases, I still know that I have more work to do on the problem.  My husband laughingly says that the solution to this problem gives me a good reason for living.  Who knows, he just maybe right...