Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is an interview with James Wesley Johnson, author of A Horse, A Gunfight, And The Law: A Historical Account of Our Alfords in Texas, and a client of Family Locket Genealogists. He hired us to help verify his family research that uncovered a family secret kept for over 100 years. Join us for a discussion of southern roots, horse thieves, gunfights, the law, and how documentary evidence and...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Diana’s 52 Ancestors post in response to the prompt about an ancestor who was the first to graduate from high school or attend college. Diana wrote about her father, Bobby Gene Shults, the first of his ancestors to graduate from college. We review Bob’s autobiographical life story and discuss his schooling from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bob made use of the GI bill to help...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Diana’s 52 ancestors post with the prompt “out of place.” She chose to write about her maternal grandfather, Edward Raymond Kelsey. After high school and a few years working at the railroad, he decided to become a hobo. This was about 1905. He stayed in hobo camps along the railroad lines and traveled throughout the northwest on the trains. Join us as we study the family...
We all have brick-wall ancestors, and often they are the women in our family tree. In this 52 ancestors post, I share more about Clemsy Cline, one of my third great-grandmothers without a well-documented trail leading to her parents. When I first started researching Clemsy, other researchers attributed John Cline and Mrs. John Cline as her parents, so I added them to my tree. I’ve looked at Clemsy through the years but not known exactly...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about evaluating family trees and the sources in them to help us determine if a family tree is accurate. We review independent sources, primary information, and direct evidence. In the absence of direct evidence, we can often put together a body of indirect evidence to help us prove a parent-child link, but that requires a written conclusion. Often family trees are missing this element. Transcript Nicole Elder...
When researching the identity of an ancestor who may have changed his name, examining the people he associated with can lead to important connections. In part 1 of this series, we looked at using the FAN methodology (comparing Friends, Associates, and Neighbors). The timeline clearly showed that Patrick Alford changed his name to James William Johnson between 1879 and 1885 to hide from Texas law. In part 2, we added confirmation of the relationship between...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about AncestryDNA’s Thrulines hypotheses. We respond to a listener question about how accurate Thrulines is. We discuss new AncestryDNA technology SideView and how they use that to split up matches by parent. We review strategies for analyzing Thrulines to see if it’s accurate or not. We talk about matches sharing small amounts of DNA and how they are often found in inaccurate Thurlines hypotheses. Transcript Nicole Elder...
When researching the identity of an ancestor who may have changed his name, examining the people he associated with can lead to important connections. In part 1 of this series, we looked at using the FAN methodology (comparing Friends, Associates, and Neighbors). The timeline clearly showed that Patrick Alford changed his name to James William Johnson between 1879 and 1885 to hide from Texas law. With a clear understanding of James’s relationship to his...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about one of Diana’s favorite photos of an ancestor – Florence Matilda Creer. Florence was Diana’s grandmother. They had a lot in common, from reading, to music. The photo appears to depict three friends in the early 1910s, possibly traveling somewhere together. The man has his arms around the two women, but each woman appears to be trying to remove his hand. Diana shares her research...
Do you have an individual you’ve researched and have many pieces of indirect evidence pointing to him as your ancestor? Perhaps you’re unsure of the connection though, and wondering what to do next. With DNA now giving us a way to prove biological relationships, we can use this new tool to add evidence to our conclusions. Years ago, I hypothesized Benjamin Cox as the father of my third great-grandmother, Rachel Cox. Records in Texas in...
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