In today’s episode of Research Like a Pro, Diana and Nicole discuss the value of negative evidence in genealogy research. They explore the case of Henderson Weatherford, who was long assumed to be the son of William Weatherford. However, a careful examination of William’s probate records reveals that Henderson is not listed among the heirs.
Additionally, tax records show that Henderson disappeared from the tax rolls between 1861 and 1862, and his property was subsequently listed under his son-in-law’s name. The absence of a probate file for Henderson in Dallas County further supports the theory that he was not related to the established Weatherford family in the area. The hosts emphasize the importance of thoroughly searching available records and documenting negative searches. By paying close attention to what is missing from the records, researchers can disprove family relationships, narrow down time periods for events, and find new research directions.
This summary was generated by Google Gemini.
Transcript
Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, episode 341, The Value of Negative Evidence. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.
Nicole (42s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hello everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro. Hi mom.
Diana (48s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?
Nicole (51s):
Good, how are you? What are you working on?
Diana (53s):
Well, it’s the first of the year, so I’m working on getting organized again and I realized that I have not been tracking my projects very well for the last year or two. You know, I made that great template for tracking projects and I just got busy and forgot to update it. So I’ve been working last couple of days on making sure I’ve got all of my research logs and reports and documents, everything noted in that template because it’s the only way I can remember what I’ve done. It’s so weird that I just keep forgetting that I’ve done projects. I don’t know about you, but I’ve done so many now that sometimes I forget.
Nicole (1m 35s):
Yeah, it’s really funny because I was looking back at previous research I had done for the 14 day challenge and I couldn’t remember what I did and I had to actually search through the challenge Facebook group to try to find what I had posted because I couldn’t even remember to search through my Google Drive because I had just saved the project documents to the ancestors folder and there’s so many folders that I didn’t even know where to look. It was really funny to just realize what I had done and of course when I started looking at it, it came back, but I couldn’t pull it out of thin air. So it is so valuable to have something to track the projects you’ve done, and I have a spreadsheet in Google Sheets that I started a couple years ago that’s like all of my Research Like a Pro projects that I’ve done in the study groups and in the 14 day challenge and I have a link to the project document that I’ve done.
Nicole (2m 30s):
And keeping that updated has been so helpful to kind of see what I’ve done and when I’m choosing a new objective to be able to look at that and see do I wanna continue any of these projects or do I wanna start a new one? And I’m gonna put them all into Airtable because after updating the Google sheet the other day, I was getting annoyed because Airtable is so much better to put things in a table and you can have all these different views and things. And so I’m gonna add and update your Airtable project tracker for paternal ancestors since those are the projects I’ve worked on, I haven’t done any projects on your mom’s side. And I think it would be fun and interesting to do, but I haven’t. And then I need to start an Airtable tracking base for research I’ve done on my husband’s side, the Dyer side.
Nicole (3m 16s):
And then I’ll start a base, I’ll just copy and duplicate your project tracking base for dad’s side to put in the Elder research that we’ve done. So it’ll be good to really just have a home base to look and see what projects we’ve done, have links to all of the reports and the project documents and whatever was created for that project. And just feel like we know what we’ve done,
Diana (3m 42s):
Exactly what we’ve written about, because I’ve also got a place in that template for blog posts and podcasts and presentations because we use a lot of our research in our teaching and sometimes I will forget that I even wrote a blog post about something. And so I’ve been trying to do that as well. And I also have a link to our Ancestry tree for the page for the ancestor and the family search page. And then we also have a place for the DNA, which is really nice, You know, our DNA test takers, so we know who’s got a Y-DNA test done or mitochondrial DNA test done.
Diana (4m 22s):
So I remember we started working on this, doing this template probably two or three years ago, and it is just so fun to see how valuable it is. So I’m excited at the beginning of this year to get it all updated and be able to take a look and think about what research I want to accomplish this year.
Nicole (4m 41s):
Yes, I am excited about that too, and it is kind of fun, but also I wish that I could accomplish more in a year. You know, I wish I could be getting more projects done and it’s sometimes it’s hard to look at the spreadsheet and see all of the projects that I couldn’t solve. You know, about half of them I feel like I’ve completed and the other half I feel like need more work and I need to put more phases into it. And sometimes I feel like I just wish I could finish that one and and find the answer and wrap it up or just have a chance to actually work on it. So it’s good to have the 14 day challenge to be able to do a smaller project and add another phase of research for something.
Diana (5m 29s):
Well, and I think the 14 day challenge is perfect for some of the ancestors that we have not really touched before. You know, in this phase of better research, we did the basics back in the day, and it’s always really fun to go back to those ancestors and then perhaps research the context or You know, try to put everything together in a written report or a little narrative. So I’m looking at these blank spaces on here for ancestors that I haven’t really touched like that and thinking, wow, I really would love to do something on some of these. But also I feel like it shows your body of work in one place, whether you do it in a spreadsheet or you do it in an Airtable base, we may not feel like we’re getting a lot done, that we’re making that much progress.
Diana (6m 15s):
But when you look at these and you go, wow, I have done a lot of work in the last few years on these ancestors, and so I’m feeling pretty accomplished at how much I’ve done. And even though some of them aren’t completely finished yet, getting closer and closer. And I also was going to say, when you were saying that you feel like you haven’t come to a good conclusion, I think there’s a value in putting aside an ancestor for a while and coming back a few years later even because maybe more records are available or you’ve learned something new that will help you, or you just see it with fresh ice. And so it’s a good thing. We have a lot of ancestors, so we can go try a new one if we get tired of researching one. Right,
Nicole (6m 56s):
Right. It’s so true. And whenever I go through and do a a project where I’m listing all of the ancestors of a certain type, I realize how many people there are in our family trees that I can research. And I’ve been working on a project like that to list all of our, my and my husband’s ancestors who were part of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early church in the early like 1830s and forties. And between us, we have a lot of them and most of them I haven’t ever researched. So that’s something that’s a goal for me this year is to work on researching a lot of them and diving into the manuscript records of our church, which have been posted online.
Nicole (7m 38s):
So it’s gonna be really interesting. But I think you’re right that it’s good to consider all of the work that we’ve done and not focus on the ones that are unfinished, but just to focus on what the good we’ve been able to do. And of course, we’ll have more time in the future to work on it as we keep going forward and and not giving up, obviously. And when you were saying more records become available, I was thinking about the full text search and how, You know, one of my previous projects that I kind of abandoned for a while about George Welch’s parents, I would like to use the full text search to help me with that because it was kind of a lot of fan club research for the Welch’s and distinguishing Welch’s of similar names and that kind of thing.
Nicole (8m 21s):
So that might be a really helpful tool to solve that one.
Diana (8m 25s):
Well, I think that absolutely will. And as FamilySearch uses their AI programs to make more of these records that they’ve got this immense collection out there, full tech searchable, it could be that that will really open some doors for us and make things a little bit easier. And they’re continuing to get things microfilmed or digitized now because we know from your experience that a lot of the courthouses in Oklahoma have not been digitized. They’re records. So we, we have a lot of records that still are not really available to us readily online. So that’ll be exciting to have those eventually done, we hope.
Nicole (9m 4s):
Yeah, it’s interesting. When I learned more about Oklahoma, I found that a bunch of them are putting their own records online on a different website that Oklahoma uses. So they have some indexes and you can still find a lot of things online. So if it’s not on FamilySearch, don’t assume it’s not online, I guess is something else I learned because it could be online on a different website that some county or state is using.
Diana (9m 28s):
Absolutely. When I was doing my Dallas County Deeds, it was a whole different website. They were all there to view, there was an index and you could look at them digitally, but it was through their own, their own website. So really have to do your research. Well, I guess we better get going on our actual topic of the day, speaking of Dallas County. But first, let’s do some announcements. We’re excited for our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series, and coming up on Tuesday, February 18th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time, we have got Cathy Duncan presenting Texas Migration Patterns and DNA Connect Lucinda Wright Rinker to Her Father.
Diana (10m 9s):
So this will be fascinating. The description states Lucinda Wright married A.F. Rinker in 1874 in Johnson County, Texas. After Lucinda entered the Texas State Lunatic Asylum in 1880, her paper trail ends.
Diana (10m 50s):
What exists does not name her father. Records from four Texas counties connect the A.F. Rinker and Silas Wright families through parallel migrations. DNA seals the deal. So the topics we will be discussing will be Texas, Non-Population Schedules, Tax Records, Court Records, Texas State Law, Land Grants, Civil War Pension Applications, Ancestry DNA. Well, I’m especially interested in this one because of course we have a lot of Texas ancestors, but after we talked about the story of the woman who was put into the asylum by her husband because they didn’t like her religious views. Now I always question when I see these stories of women being put away and wondering why. So I don’t know if this, this webinar will talk about that much, but I’m fascinated to hear what Cathy will have to say for news of everything we’re doing and for coupons for any cells we might be having. Be sure to join our newsletter. It comes out every Monday and we’re excited about upcoming conferences. RootsTech is coming quickly. It will be March 6th through 8th in Salt Lake City.
Diana (11m 31s):
And the National Genealogical Society Conference will be May 23rd to 26th in Louisville, Kentucky. And we are excited to be in person at both of those events and to be presenting some really fun topics. Well, we’re also excited for our 14 day Research Like a Pro challenge, which begins tomorrow January 21st. So today, if you’re listening to this, when this comes out on the 20th is the last day to sign up for the email prompts and you just go to FamilyLocket.com/challenge and you can join us for a fun two weeks of researching and ancestor.
Nicole (12m 12s):
Great, I hope a bunch of you will join us, and we always look forward to this opportunity to work on our own family. Like we were talking about earlier today, we’re talking about negative evidence and in genealogy, what we don’t find can be just as important as what we do find. And we will return to our case study of Henderson Weatherford that we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, and learned about how careful attention to negative evidence helped break down a challenging Burke wall and disprove commonly accepted relationships. Negative searches become negative evidence when we correlate them with other records and compile them in written form.
Diana (12m 56s):
Well, this is one of the ancestors that we had researched back in the day, and I really didn’t know for sure who were his parents. So I had assigned two sets of parents to him. Most researchers assumed he was the son of William Weatherford who had died in Dallas County in 1849 because both men lived in Dallas County in the 1860s. Well, William had died, but his family had lived on there in Dallas County. And it just seemed like a logical connection. But when I actually dug into the records and I looked up William’s probate, he had a probate file and it specifically listed the only heirs of said estate. And the heirs listed were Thomas Benton, Weatherford, Elizabeth, Nancy Weatherford, two women, Elizabeth Weatherford, Nancy Weatherford, harden, Weatherford and wife Polly, and then Nancy Weatherford the widow.
Diana (13m 50s):
No mention of Henderson. And his absence from this list really was significant in 1849 when William died and his estate was probated, Henderson was very much alive. He was just over in Morgan County, Missouri. And it seems like if he had been William’s son, he would likely have been listed among the heirs.
Nicole (14m 13s):
Agreed. And I think that’s really strong negative evidence to be able to look at that and say, he’s not listed here. It says these are all the heirs. And Texas law at this time says the children are the heirs. So either he was adopted or he’s not one of those children, and it seems more likely that he’s not one of the children, he’s just a different Weatherford. And although we thought the Weatherford name was really uncommon because we’d never heard it before, it seems like it was more common than we realized.
Diana (14m 40s):
Yeah, there are a lot of WeatherFords out there, which is often the case when we just haven’t had the experience of that name of hearing or working with that name. There’s actually more than you think sometimes,
Nicole (14m 52s):
Right? I think it’s such a common assumption for Genealogists to make that, oh, this, there’s nobody else with this name, or this is the only family of this surname. And once we start working on more advanced cases, you realize how many people of the similar name, or even the same exact name live in the state and the county and the area. And you have to distinguish the people and see if they were part of the same family or not. Well, he wasn’t just missing from that probate record, he was also missing from the tax records. And Henderson, we didn’t really know exactly when he died, but tax records really helped figure that out because we could trace him a little bit more closely by looking at the taxes with the federal census.
Nicole (15m 45s):
We have 10 years in between, and so you really don’t get a a very detailed view of when he died. But what we had is that in 1860, Henderson appeared on Dallas County tax roll paying taxes on two acres and working as a blacksmith. But then the next year in 1861 and 1862, he is not listed in Dallas County tax lists. The other WeatherFords appear on the tax list though. And then eventually in 1863 and it 1864, his property is listed under Samuel Beaman per H Weatherford.
Nicole (16m 25s):
And that indicates that he was probably deceased by that time, and Samuel Beman was paying the taxes and we don’t really know who he is at this point. And then in 1865, there was no listing for Henderson Weatherford or Samuel Beman regarding his property on the tax list. So this pattern really suggests that Henderson died in those years where he wasn’t listed at all. And then we figured out that the Samuel Beman was his son-in-law. And so now we have an actual connection in the tax records showing an association of a family member with Henderson Weatherford.
Nicole (17m 7s):
And so this is his son-in-law, and in 1863 and 1864, the son-in-law was paying the taxes for his father-in-law who was probably deceased and handling the remaining property matters. And by 1865, all the property matters were probably settled, and that’s why there was no longer a tax record for that.
Diana (17m 28s):
Right. And an interesting thing from having done all the research for all the WeatherFords in Dallas County, there was a Jefferson Weatherford who seemed very wealthy, and he handled the estates and the probate and paid taxes for all sorts of the other Weatherford people. And so it seems like if Henderson had been a part of this family, this would’ve been his probable, either a brother or an uncle would’ve handled his as well. So the fact that we don’t even have Jefferson Weatherford involved in this at all, and we’ve gotten said Samuel Beman, it just is making distance, separating, separating the families.
Diana (18m 10s):
Well, another piece of negative evidence in this research was from the Dallas County probate records. Henderson did have property and he had a family. So you would think that there would be a probate file upon his death, but there was no probate. I, You know, I searched the index. We did full text searches of the court records, looked at deed records after 1861, and there just was nothing. So this absence suggests that either he died elsewhere, perhaps he disposed of his property before his death, or maybe his estate by that time was too small to require probate. So often with negative searches, they lead us to looking at something else.
Diana (18m 54s):
And I do want to continue the research on him to see if I can discover this idea of maybe him dying somewhere else. So we, we have more negative evidence piling up about Henderson.
Nicole (19m 9s):
Yeah, and I think sometimes we kind of skip over the probate and just assume that there wasn’t any, if we don’t find it in the place where we think, but you’re right, he could have gone somewhere else. And maybe there is a record somewhere. It’s good to keep our minds open and search all different avenues. Well, let’s have a word from our Sponsor. The New year is the perfect time to start or restart your genealogy research with fresh eyes and new goals. Dig even deeper into your family history with Newspapers.com, the largest online newspaper archive. If you are a Genealogist you know old newspapers can help you find forgotten stories and fill in the gaps between vital records. That’s where Newspapers.com comes in.
Nicole (19m 50s):
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Diana (20m 28s):
Thank you. Well, perhaps the most telling negative evidence as I’ve hinted at, comes from comparing Henderson’s property location with that group of established Dallas County WeatherFords and doing the tax research from 1847 to 1864, I found some really distinct patterns. So the Dallas County Weatherford Group, they consistently owned land on the Trinity River Water course, and they were centered around the Lancaster Post office area. They gradually had accumulated large land holdings over time, and you could see clear property relationships with land passing between family members.
Diana (21m 11s):
We would see a husband dying and then his wife paying taxes or a child paying taxes on land a father had owned. And as I had mentioned this, Jefferson Weatherford acted as the administrator and even guardian for several of the family members.
Nicole (21m 29s):
Well, let’s compare and contrast that with where Henderson lived. He owned just two acres near Cyan post office, S-C-Y-E-N-E, about 20 miles from Lancaster. Do you have any idea how that’s pronounced?
Diana (21m 44s):
I just always think of it as sayin, but
Nicole (21m 47s):
Sayin, I
Diana (21m 48s):
Dunno. And
Nicole (21m 49s):
One thing that is interesting is that he did not ever own land on the Trinity River. So the absence of him being near the other WeatherFords, another piece of negative evidence that he was probably not close with them or associated or related to them, he maintained a small property suited to his blacksmith trade, and he had no property transactions at all with other WeatherFords. And he did not have any estate administration by Jefferson Weatherford, the other Weatherford family’s primary business manager. So this separation and location and complete lack of business dealings between Henderson, Weatherford and the other WeatherFords argues against a family connection.
Nicole (22m 34s):
And if Henderson had been part of the Dallas County Weatherford family, we would expect to see property near the other family members, possibly a land transaction with relatives, similar watercourse locations, business dealings with Jefferson Weatherford, and maybe a residence closer to a supposed mother. Now, this doesn’t prove there wasn’t a connection, but it, it is evidence,
Diana (22m 56s):
Right? And as we start putting things together, we can start building a case for that. So it was interesting to look at a map, and I actually found this map when I was doing a project on Henderson’s daughter Isabella, and using artificial intelligence to help me do a locality guide on Dallas County. And it found this great map of Dallas County with post offices. You know, so often we see the post office listed in the census, but we don’t always know exactly where that was, especially if it didn’t become a city. You know, some of those post offices just kind of the, the little community sort of died out.
Diana (23m 37s):
But this one was a post office circa 1866. So it was right there at the time when this was all happening. And that was such a great find. It was over on the Library of Congress and just, You know, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know where to look for something. So let’s just kind of go back and think about some of the lessons we can learn from this. Well, for one thing, we have to really do the research. I had some theories, but it was not until I did that tax research and the probate records. You know, you have to just thoroughly search everything before you can come to some type of a conclusion.
Diana (24m 21s):
And you’ve gotta document those negative searches in multiple record types to build your case. Having a negative citation showing that you thought to search for all the probate is very, very important. And then we also have to think about what the missing evidence might mean and put it into a historical and legal context. So in this case, something that we really haven’t discussed is the fact that this was all happening during the Civil War. During the Civil War, there was a lot of disruption everywhere, and especially in this area probably. So I would like to dig in more into that and see if maybe that is why we are not seeing probate, because who knows what was going on there.
Diana (25m 2s):
But we can use negative evidence to disprove family relationships, narrow time periods for events, and to suggest alternative research directions. So I am excited to think about, You know, what else I could do to continue working on this case.
Nicole (25m 20s):
Yeah, that’s great. It’s nice to feel like you’ve disproved something and then be able to go forward in a different direction or just be able to go forward and have the information that probably that relationship was wrong, not necessarily a whole new different direction, but using the information you found and building on it. And the place that it actually points to is back to Izard County, Arkansas, where he first appeared in historical records. And I love that this case really helps us to learn about assumptions, and we do have to let go of assumptions sometimes and listen to what the records or the lack of records are telling us.
Nicole (26m 2s):
So now why don’t you all think about what brick walls in your research might benefit from a closer look at negative evidence? Do you have an assumption in your tree that isn’t a valid assumption? Is one of your assumptions based on proximity, but you haven’t looked at the probate records to see if your person appears as a child? Maybe you haven’t looked as carefully as you could have, and when you look closer, sometimes your assumptions are overturned. And that’s a beautiful thing and it can lead you to the correct family for your ancestor. Well, thanks everyone for listening, and we hope you have a great week.
Diana (26m 41s):
All right, thanks everyone. Bye-bye
Nicole (26m 43s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.
Links
The Value of Negative Evidence: What Henderson Weatherford’s Absence Reveals – https://familylocket.com/the-value-of-negative-evidence-what-henderson-weatherfords-absence-reveals/
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Research Like a Pro Resources
Airtable Universe – Nicole’s Airtable Templates – https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrsBSDhwHyLNnP4O/nicole-dyer
Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference – by Nicole Dyer – https://familylocket.com/product-tag/airtable/
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
14-Day Research Like a Pro Challenge Workbook – digital – https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-digital-only/ and spiral bound – https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-spiral-bound/
Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2024 – monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2024/
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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