RLP 389: Revisiting the Father of Cynthia (Dillard) Royston – Part 2 Timeline

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 389: Revisiting the Father of Cynthia (Dillard) Royston – Part 2 Timeline. 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.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hello everybody, welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (50s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
Hey, I’m doing well. How are you?

Diana (55s):
I am doing great. I’ve been having some fun using AI to help me with a report I’ve written and my citations because I wondered if my citations were all consistent, you know, little formatting type things. Sometimes we get in a hurry and, you know, I’ll write a citation and then I think, oh, I wonder if that’s exactly the same as I’ve been doing all of these court cases or, you know, census cases, whatever. And so I have a lot of citations in this, this paper, like over a hundred. And I decided to put it into each AI model and see who would give me the best review.

Diana (1m 38s):
So guess which one was the best?

Nicole (1m 44s):
Gemini?

Diana (1m 44s):
Well, interestingly enough, I did try Gemini 3.0, the brand new model and it was not good at all. It was really general and it didn’t, maybe my prompt wasn’t very good, but I basically did the same prompt in all the models I tried. So I was not super impressed with Gemini. I tried it in Claude. Claude was okay. But the one that was really good was Deep Research or the thinking model for ChatGPT because it took a good 15 minutes and went through it carefully and then it grouped all the problems, like all the censuses, here’s the problems and here are the problems with this type.

Diana (2m 25s):
And gave me the specific numbers of the footnotes so I didn’t have to do anything but just go look for it and say, oh, I did forget to put a period after that abbreviation, or I did forget the URL. You know, just those little, those little ticky tack things that would just be so hard to find yourself ’cause you just tend to skip over things, you know, when you’re looking at your screen. So anyway, that was a fun experiment to see, you know, how AI would do with checking on consistency in a big paper.

Nicole (2m 56s):
Wow, that is a really fun experiment.

Diana (2m 59s):
Well, let’s do some announcements for today. We are so excited to be starting our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for 2026, and our first one to kick off the new year will be on Saturday, January 17th at 11 AM Mountain Time. This is going to be by Emma Lowe, and the title is, Reconstructing the Family of Dorothea Radloff in Pomerania. After tracing Dorothea Radloff from the Midwestern United States to her birthplace in a small village in Pomerania, meticulously kept German church records, carefully analyzed, enabled the discovery of many new Radloff relatives.

Diana (3m 41s):
This case study follows the Research Like a Pro process to systematically identify and search relevant German record collections, following the clues that enabled the discovery of many new Radloff relatives in Dorothea’s homeland of Pomerania. So topics for this webinar will be Germany, FAN club research, Evangelical-Lutheran church records, locality survey, German research resources, Archion. So our presenter, Emma, is a professional genealogist. We are thrilled to have her as a member of our team here at Family Locket And she is pursuing a master’s degree from the University of Strathclyde.

Diana (4m 23s):
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Family History with an emphasis in German-American immigrant research from Brigham Young University, where she also minored in Korean and Mathematics. She also enjoys British, African-American, and DNA research. So we are so thrilled to have Emma presenting and if you do any type of German research, this will have so many good ideas and methodologies for you. Our next Study Group is with DNA and it begins February, 2026. Registration is now open and we would love to have you join us for a really fun learning experience.

Diana (5m 4s):
And as always, join our newsletter that comes out every Monday with our new blog posts, podcasts, upcoming lectures, coupon codes, and other good things that we like to share with you. And finally, we are excited about RootsTech coming up. It’s getting closer every week. So March, mark, your calendars, March 5th through 7th, 2026. It will be in person in Salt Lake City and have the online version as well. Well, for our podcast episode today, we are going to continue with our series on Revisiting the Father of Cynthia Dillard Royston. And as you know, I have been working on figuring out who Cynthia’s father is for many years.

Diana (5m 50s):
And so this was our latest project that I did in our fall study group and in our previous episode I talked about the four previous research projects that I had done on this and then the objective that I created. And in this episode we’ll talk all about the timeline and analyzing sources and information.

Nicole (6m 13s):
Alright, great. So to get us started, the objective for this phase is discover a candidate for Cynthia Dillard Royston’s father residing in Cass County, Georgia during the 1830s. Cynthia was born about 1815 in Georgia and died on August 22nd, 1882 in Collin County, Texas. Cynthia married Thomas B Royston about 1833 or 1834, possibly in Cass County, Georgia. So the timeline step for Cynthia and for any research project involves gathering the relevant previous research on the ancestor and assembling it into a timeline. We use the database spreadsheet hybrid Airtable for the research log and that timeline.

Nicole (6m 57s):
And in my latest template Research Like a Pro with DNA 4.1, you enter the source information first into the research log, then use an automation feature to automatically copy information over into a new row in the timeline table. This avoids having to type anything again once you put the sources in order and it allows you to add multiple events or timeline entries from one source, like a census record.

Diana (7m 27s):
Well, I love that new template and the ability to just get that information easily from the research log into the timeline. So great. So I had a lot of sources that I have accumulated through the years on Cynthia and Thomas and I decided I would start a new Airtable with this new base and pull out all the relevant sources so that I have everything in one place. And I decided to put all the censuses in the timeline of her life. You know, we always wanna do the censuses, and the really interesting thing about Cynthia is that every census does give her place of birth as Georgia, but her birth year is different every single census year, which is really not unusual, but she has her birth year as 1815 in 1850, then 1816 in1860, 1817 in 1870 and 1818 in 1880, which is kind of a funny pattern, isn’t it?

Diana (8m 30s):
So when I looked at that I thought, oh, that’s so interesting. She got a little bit younger with each census year. So I had to look at it and think what does make the most sense there? You know, it’s not a huge swing. Sometimes we’ll have a swing of maybe 10 years for a birth, and this one is just between 1815 and 1818. But I looked at her oldest child whose name is Mary Elizabeth, and sources for her don’t quite agree on her birth year either. Her headstone in the cemetery record says for May, 1834, but this 1850 census puts it more at 1835.

Diana (9m 15s):
So, you know, 1834, 1835, we’re close there. And so since I don’t have a marriage record for Cynthia and Thomas, I have just estimated that they got married about a year before Mary Elizabeth was born. So 1833 or 1834. So if born in 1815, Cynthia would’ve been 18 or 19 years old when she was married and 19 or 20 at the time of her daughter’s birth. Whereas if she was born in 1818, she would’ve been 15 at the time of marriage and 16 at the time of her daughter’s birth. So it just makes sense that she was born more in the 1815 range, that she was a little bit older before she married this era in Georgia.

Diana (9m 60s):
You know, women didn’t marry super early, like in some of the other areas, other states. So I am thinking that she probably was born about 1815.

Nicole (10m 12s):
Well, good job looking at all the different sources that might shed light on this. And it’s so tricky with early southern records to be able to get vital records for birth and marriage sometimes. And so we do have to do a lot of estimating, which can be a really frustrating, but it’s good to see that there is a way to kind of figure out when things probably happened, even though we don’t have the source to show the exact date. Well, phase four of the search for Cynthia’s father involved DNA, and in that phase Elijah Dillard was discovered as a possible brother. And so Diana included him in the timeline because she now had two genetically related people to use for comparison to another Dillard group.

Nicole (11m 0s):
So this was kind of a separate timeline for Elijah, including all the records previously found for him, census, land patents, military records, and a death record. His purported birth year has an even wider swing than Cynthia’s, 1816 to 1825. So his birth was probably closer to the 1816 and 1818 reportings of the 1880 census and the death register. And this puts him closer to Cynthia’s birth year estimate. Elijah’s birthplace is consistently named as Georgia, so they definitely seem like they could be siblings.

Diana (11m 41s):
Right. They really do. And in that report, in that phase, I pulled together some different evidence pieces that, you know, shows that they are likely brother-sister. It is interesting to think about that large birth swing though, you know, 1816 to 1825. And we often do have things like that. Well, I decided to put in my timeline, just put everybody all together in one. And then I have groupings, you know, Airtable makes it really easy for us to group and save views. So I created a group by person.

Diana (12m 20s):
So I have a view that’s just showing Cynthia, I have it filtered down to just Cynthia. And then I also have a view just filtered for Elijah. So You know, I have one view with everything and the people grouped and then I have them separated out. I like lots of different views in Airtable because I’m always doing different, different things, playing with the records. So for Elijah, I have quite a few records for him because I did a whole project. But then I also wanted to do a timeline for the people that I am working on for this project. And these are the Cass County, Georgia Dillards. I had found several Dillards in the 1840 census in Cass County.

Diana (13m 2s):
And this is where I discovered Thomas Beverly Royston had moved in the early 1830s, just about the time when he would’ve been getting married. And so I hypothesized that Cynthia’s family could be there. So I decided to look at these Dillards for this project and I really didn’t have anything except for the census. So I entered the census records into the timeline and really carefully looked at their births. You know, 1840 census, we don’t get specific years of how old they are, we just get that range. But I used that to create the range for their births and how old they probably were.

Diana (13m 45s):
And there were two that looked like they could be a parent for Cynthia based on their age. And one was named Elizabeth and one was named John. But an interesting thing is that there was an Elijah Dillard among this group, and I thought maybe he is the same Elijah Dillard that I did in phase four, but he was a, he was about 10 years too old. And then I thought, well, could he be a father for both Cynthia and Elijah? And so I ended up having two Elijahs in the timeline, so I added an identifier to each of their names. So I have Elijah Dillard of Cass Georgia, and then the DNA discovered Elijah is Elijah Dillard of Alabama.

Diana (14m 27s):
So you know, sometimes that happens. We have people of the same name and we have to figure out how we’ll differentiate them in our timeline. So I had those Dillards from Cass County, and then the final one was a William, and he was probably not Cynthia’s father, but I thought perhaps he’s another relative.

Nicole (14m 47s):
Hmm. So you decided those two Elijahs are not the same person?

Diana (14m 50s):
Well, it doesn’t look like it at this point. I mean that based on just one census. I haven’t ruled him out at this point. He seems a little bit old, but, you know, sometime maybe there’s something that was wrong. Maybe he was marked wrong in that census.

Nicole (15m 5s):
True. Yeah, I’m guessing he put into the 1800-1810 birth year range or something. And that’s a little bit before the 1816 estimated birth date.

Diana (15m 15s):
Exactly. But you don’t wanna rule things out just based on one record. And so more research needed to be done.

Nicole (15m 24s):
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Diana (16m 32s):
Alright, well let’s talk now about source analysis. So after we have entered our data into the timeline, then it’s really good to really take a look at the source, the information and the evidence kind of pulling apart apart those various items. And I had a lot of federal census records in this timeline, especially for those 1840 census Dillards and censuses are pretty easy to put into the right category. They are original records created at the time of the event, and they are an enumeration of the residents of a specific geographical location.

Diana (17m 16s):
Now, each census though has a lot of different pieces of information that we can use. And we are going to have the residents, we have household makeup, migration patterns based on children’s birthplaces, which we get after 1840, the ages of household members occupations and more. So the informant, however, is unknown for the census. And so for most of these items in the timeline, I gave it the label of undetermined information. The one that was direct, you know, evidence and primary information was the residence because the enumerator, whoever was taking that census, should know where people were living, should know the location that they are in.

Diana (18m 6s):
So these details, however, even though they were undetermined information, they did give me direct evidence of the age of people, even though it was that range, you know, like 20 to 30 or something like that. And it did give me that direct evidence of residence since it directly answered that question. Now after I did have some censuses such as Cynthia and her purported brother Elijah, that were after 1840 and so then I also had their birthplaces direct evidence of that. So let’s take a look at that 1840 census. And what I noticed in doing some really close analysis that this was Cass County, Georgia and three of the Dillards were all listed really close to each other.

Diana (18m 56s):
There were John and [William] Dillard right next to each other, and then Elijah a few lines down, and they were all on the same page in district 973. So I hypothesize that they could be related, those three could have some connection to each other. But then on the other hand, there is this Elizabeth Dillard and she’s in a totally different district 951. And that makes you wonder, is she just completely unrelated to John, William and Elijah or, you know, were the two districts just sort of side by side and they’re on the edges and she’s just across the border of the district.

Diana (19m 37s):
I, I didn’t look at the districts to see if I could find a map of those. Sometimes you can find things like that and other times, no, not so much. But I did make note that she’s in a different area. She could be different, a different family. So it was really good to go through all of my old research and put together this new timeline and just see what I have. It helped me remember my reasoning and really set the stage for what I wanted to do in this phase of research. And that initial review of the Cass County Dillards showed some possibilities and really the need for additional research, You know, just looking at one census for them opened up a lot of different questions and possibilities for more research.

Diana (20m 25s):
So it’s really exciting to have somebody new to research when you have one of these cases where you feel like you’ve done so much. So new avenues are always exciting.

Nicole (20m 36s):
That is exciting. So it sounds like either Elizabeth Dillard or John Dillard has a child of the right age to be Cynthia. And so finding that they lived in different districts kind of gives you like an easy separation into two hypotheses, like, and they might not be related unless you do find that they were adjacent or something, but, and sometimes it’s hard to find maps of the districts or the civil divisions within a county like that, especially for such an early time period, like 1840.

Diana (21m 5s):
Oh yeah, absolutely. You get lucky sometimes if they’re, if somebody drew a map and it’s available and out there, but not an easy thing to find often. So usually it’s easier just to go do more research on them and figure out who they are.

Nicole (21m 20s):
Yeah,

Diana (21m 20s):
and see what you can find.

Nicole (21m 20s):
Yeah, and see if you can figure out their proximity to each other on, with, like, land records or something.

Diana (21m 28s):
Yeah.

Nicole (21m 29s):
And and sometimes it’s a lot of comparative mapping and just looking at, okay, in this deed, they lived by this creek and then, you know, this creek is probably located in this district based on all the other people that live nearby and that kind thing.

Diana (21m 43s):
Right.

Nicole (21m 44s):
It’s really fun and rewarding to do that, but it’s also a whole project on its own just to do that to be honest.

Diana (21m 51s):
Oh right. And, you know, in a case like this, I’m really looking to either rule them in or rule them out as a potential. And so often when you’re researching somebody just brand new like this, the records are, can be really available and all you have to do is just go looking for them and you can figure out who they are and where they came from and if they are still, you know, a good possible. So

Nicole (22m 17s):
Yeah, like a survey of just kind of what’s out there and what’s known. And then you can dive deeper and you know somebody can’t be eliminated. Well this is a good

Diana (22m 26s):
Exactly.

Nicole (22m 27s):
a good kind of start to the project. The timeline phase is always so helpful to review what’s already known and get ideas for research planning. I mean, if you don’t do this, how do you know what to plan for in your research? You’re kind of just guessing.

Diana (22m 43s):
Right. You don’t remember past research as well. And if you have some new people you want to explore, you need to have a little bit of a foundation in their lives to, to decide what you want to do next. So I was happy I had done a little preliminary work and found these 1840 Dillards so that now I have a good idea of who they are. You know, some ideas possibly of who they are. And then as you’re looking, you know, for possibilities for research planning, it helps you think about what would be possible, what would be the best course to take going forward.

Nicole (23m 20s):
Well, great. Well, thanks for giving us this update on your project and it will be fun to go forward with the next episode and see what happened as you continued throughout the project.

Diana (23m 32s):
All right.

Nicole (23m 33s):
Well thanks for listening everyone, and we hope you have a great week. We’ll talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.

Diana (23m 40s):
Bye-bye.

Nicole (23m 38s):
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.