RLP 393: Revisiting the Father of Cynthia (Dillard) Royston – Part 6 Writing the Report

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro, Episode 393: Revisiting the Father of Cynthia (Dillard) Royston – Part 6 Writing the Report. 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. Hi everyone, and welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (49s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (52s):
I’m doing great and I’m really excited to start the 14 Day Challenge. We’re recording this like right before we get started on it, and I’ve got some ideas for what I wanna work on with another sibling of Lucinda Keaton, so it’s gonna be fun. What about you?

Diana (1m 5s):
Oh, that’s so great. I am going to study the Daniel who my John Royston was an apprentice to. When we talked about that earlier, I thought that would be such a perfect 14 Day Challenge. Just take this one little instance and research this one man. But my, my latest thing I’ve been doing was studying Shannon Green’s article in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly from September of 2025, and it was so good. It was on the children of Stephen Hicks, of Queens County, New York. She uses manuscript collections and legislative petitions, some really unique sources to prove these children who were born in the 1600s.

Diana (1m 48s):
So it’s pre-revolution time, so really early and it’s very interesting. So I would highly recommend Shannon’s article. It’s always so fun. I learned so much from these articles.

Nicole (1m 60s):
Wow, that is very early time period. I mean, if you’re doing any Colonial research at all, that sounds like a really good article to review because Colonial times are so different and challenging in different ways. But that’s cool that she had some unique sources to use.

Diana (2m 15s):
Yeah, I think a lot of times we hear about manuscript collections and we think, oh, that would be nice. But actually seeing what she found in the ones that she was able to locate and how she used that to pull together relationships was really good. Well, let’s do some announcements. Have you ever hit a brick wall because you can’t figure out which John Smith is your John Smith? You’re not alone. Genealogists everywhere struggle with the same frustrating problem, multiple people with the same name in the same place and time period, And that’s exactly why Jan Joyce created Merging and Separating Identities, a multi-week intensive course that teaches you proven strategies to solve your most complex identity puzzles.

Diana (3m 1s):
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Diana (3m 52s):
The course will be held weekly on Thursdays from April 30th to June 11th at 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM Mountain Time. So we are excited about that institute course, and I’m already thinking about who I want to use for my case study as I work through all of Jan’s great ideas. We have our next Research Like a Pro webinar coming up, and this will be February 17th on, that’s a Tuesday at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. The title is from From Georgia to Florida: Reconstructing the Family of Seth Howard Through DNA and Historical Evidence. Seth Howard was born about 1804 in Georgia and migrated to the Territory of Florida in 1816.

Diana (4m 38s):
He is a registered “Florida Pioneer” with the Florida Genealogical Society. He is well-researched by professional genealogists and his numerous descendants, yet the identity of his parents has never been discovered. Thorough analysis of the documentary evidence gathered from his adult life seemed to yield no clues to his parentage. This case study uses atDNA cluster analysis along with pedigree triangulation as a lead toward possibly identifying his parents. Additional correlation of documentary evidence, geographical and historical context, and onomastic clues provides a compelling circumstantial case to support the report’s conclusion.

Diana (5m 21s):
So topics that our presenter will be covering are Georgia, Florida, DNA Gedcom, Clustering, BanyanDNA, Pedigree Collapse, Pedigree Triangulation, Georgia Land Lotteries, the Patriot War, Frontier Migration, Tax Records, Court Records, 19th-Century Research, Onomastic Clues, FAN Club, Correlation of Documentary Evidence, Segment Triangulation, Y-DNA, Deeds, Probate Documents Wow, that is a lot of great topics. Well, you’re probably wondering who our presenter is, and it is Sunni Mohammadbhoy. empty-nester who caught the genealogy bug when her kids bought her an Ancestry.com DNA kit for Christmas in 2018.

Diana (6m 3s):
While waiting for her results, she clicked on her first shaky leaf and has never looked back! She holds a B.A. in Actuarial Science from Florida State University and worked for many years as a pension consultant. Later, she chose to become a stay-at-home mom and helped run her husband’s business as the office manager. Sunni is a graduate of the Research Like a Pro with DNA Study Group. She enjoys attending FSU football games, searching for sharks’ teeth, reading about Florida history, SCUBA diving, and traveling. So we’re very excited to hear from Sunni. Our next study group, we’ll have DNA, and it is beginning in just a few weeks. Wednesday, February 4th is start date and registration is closing soon.

Diana (6m 46s):
So if you’ve been waiting, there are just a few spots left and we’d invite you to join us. As always, join our newsletter that comes out every Monday to find our latest posts podcast, upcoming lectures and coupon codes for any deals we are running. And we are hoping to see many of you at RootsTech, the big conference coming up March 5th through 7th at Salt Lake City. So we will be there and we hope to have a lot of new people and meet a lot of our old friends there.

Nicole (7m 19s):
Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. It’s gonna be so fun to be at RootsTech again. And we’ve been going for like 10 years. It’s going to be, I think next year will be our 10th time going, right?

Diana (7m 30s):
We started, I think 2016 was our very first year, so yeah.

Nicole (7m 34s):
Wow. So this is our 10th year then?

Diana (7m 36s):
Yeah. That’s great. Whoa.

Nicole (7m 37s):
Except for the one year when there was COVID and we didn’t go in person. Right. Was it one or two years that were like that?

Diana (7m 43s):
We had two years of online only 2021 and 2022.

Nicole (7m 49s):
We still participated, I guess. So we’re gonna count those. So this is our 10th time.

Diana (7m 52s):
Yep. We still taught classes there. Yep. Well, let’s get into our topic. And today we are talking about writing a report based on my research for Revisiting the Father of Cynthia Dillard Royston. We’ve been podcasting about all the different steps in the process and in this podcast we’ll pull everything together and I’ll give some tips on writing. You know, writing is just so important. It helps us synthesize all those details and puts them together in an organized fashion. I love writing the report because it brings the research phase to a close. I can be done with this part and get the next steps for future research.

Diana (8m 35s):
And if you’ve been listening to this series, You know that I did not find Cynthia’s father, but writing everything out makes me feel like I did make good progress. So let’s just revisit the objective in case any of our listeners have forgotten that. So my objective was 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.

Diana (9m 16s):
Well, after I put the objective in the report, I have a limitations section and it’s important to note that that’s where we remember the parameters of this research. So I wrote that this research took place between September and November, 2025. It was limited to online records and those accessible in Salt Lake City at the Family Search Library. And that one of the most significant challenges was that the earliest deed books for Cass/Bartow County are missing with the deed records only beginning in 1837. So this means that there were no land transactions I could access during this really critical period when Cynthia’s father may have been acquiring property.

Diana (10m 2s):
And I also noted that this research phase didn’t include DNA analysis, although I had used DNA in previous phase. So it’s really nice to be transparent about those limitations as we go back and look at our research, we can remember specifically what was going on with this situation.

Nicole (10m 21s):
Yeah, those limitations are important. Well, the next section is the background information where we build context and lay the foundation for understanding why the research matters and what has already been accomplished. And in this report, the section had several key subsections. First was the project overview where Diana opened by establishing who Cynthia Dillard Royston was born about 1815 in Georgia, died August 2nd, 1882 in Collin County, Texas. Her maiden name of Dillard was known only from the death certificates of three of her 14 children. The research objective was to identify her father who would’ve been born before 1795, likely in Virginia and residing in Georgia during the 1820s and thirties.

Nicole (11m 4s):
The next subsection was Cynthia’s Life and Migration. And that section says, Understanding Cynthia’s life helped establish geographic and temporal parameters. She had 14 children with Thomas B Royston, including three sons who died in the Civil War. Thomas settled in DeKalb County, Alabama, by January 1837, having moved from Georgia. Importantly, Thomas enslaved nine people in 1840, suggesting he may have originated from a family of similar economic standing—a detail that could inform the search for Cynthia’s father.

Diana (11m 39s):
So after I did the background section, I wanted to be sure I put in what I had done in the first few phases. And so I just did a little summary of those earlier research phases that Phase One examined George W Dillard as a potential father candidate and that the 1820 and 1830 census records showed a female of Cynthia’s age in his household, but a family bible proved this hypothesis wrong—the Dillard female born in 1815 was Mariah L. Dillard, not Cynthia. And then in Phase Two, I wrote about how I systematically eliminated thirteen Georgia Dillard candidates based on probate, marriage, wills, and census analysis.

Diana (12m 24s):
And each candidate was documented with specific reasons for elimination. For example, Arthur Dillard’s will named only two daughters, Nancy Harmon and Elizabeth Joslyn, and Samson Dillard’s 1848 will named four daughters. And then in Phase Three, I introduced DNA analysis and that revealed a distinct cluster suggesting Elijah Dillard, born about 1814 to 1816 in Georgia, and who died in September, 1886 in Pike County, Alabama, that this Elijah could be Cynthia’s brother, and documentary research documented his life in southeastern Alabama through land, patents, marriage records, and census records.

Diana (13m 4s):
So not only was it really helpful for me to have all the previous research right there in my my report, anybody reading it would be able to see what I’ve already tried and maybe understand the progression of my research.

Nicole (13m 19s):
I love that after going through all of the different phases and talking about them in the report, the reader is now ready to see what you found in the next phase is such a good thing to do. Now let’s have a word from our Sponsor. It’s a brand new year and maybe you’ve made a resolution to finally break through those brick walls in your family tree. But census records can only take you so far. This year take your research from dates and locations to full life stories. With Newspapers.com, you gain access to over a billion pages of historical newspapers giving you a fresh perspective on your ancestors’ lives. Discover the stories that only a local newspaper could tell. Imagine finding an obituary that names every surviving family member, or an article about your great-grandfather’s championship bowling league.

Nicole (14m 1s):
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Diana (14m 27s):
Well, let’s talk next about the body of the report. And this is where we get to talk about all the things that we discovered. And I decided in this report, I wanted to put some historical context of Cass County into the very beginning so that everything would make sense going forward. Cass County was a tricky county. It was formed December 3rd, 1832 from the Cherokee Nation lands. And it was this timing that aligned perfectly with Cynthia’s estimated marriage date to Thomas about 1833, 1834. So they would’ve moved there or they could have met right when these Cherokee lands were being distributed to the settlers.

Diana (15m 13s):
And the settlement patterns following the Cherokee removal was really crucial context for identifying which Dillard families migrated to this newly open territory and when they arrived. I learned, and I reported on the fact that it was noted that settlers primarily came from Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. So I have this strong migration pattern. And then I next talked about the 1840 census, which is where I found four Dillard households. I wanted to explore Elizabeth, John, William and Elijah Dillard thinking that maybe there could be a connection there. So I analyze each of the household’s composition to see which individuals were old enough to be Cynthia’s parent.

Diana (15m 59s):
And then I went through and researched each household seeking to identify them and see if Cynthia fit. Well, Elizabeth Dillard was interesting. She was traced to Laurens County, South Carolina with a distinct migration pattern and census district. Her appearance in Cass County, Georgia after Cynthia had moved to Alabama with Thomas, eliminated her as a relative. So she just appeared too late. Then John Dillard and his sons, William and Elijah were tracked from North Carolina through Monroe County, Tennessee before settling in Cass County. And I was able to find deed records that named his heirs, and Cynthia was not part of them.

Diana (16m 44s):
And also there’s no sign that she ever came from Tennessee or North Carolina. And then the Elijah Dillard in the 1840 household as a head of household was confirmed to be John Dillard’s son. And so he also was from North Carolina through Tennessee. And he was not the Elijah Dillard I had found in the DNA project who was a genetic relative of Cynthia. So basically all those Dillards in the 1840 census were not connected at all to Cynthia.

Nicole (17m 14s):
So when you presented that in the report, did you just have like a bulleted list with that information or did you do a paragraph for each candidate that you eliminated?

Diana (17m 22s):
I really spent a little bit of time on each one. I did a snippet screenshot of each of the censuses, and I wanted to present all the, the research. So I cited specific things, such as the deed, or for Elizabeth, there was a newspaper article showing that she died and, and different things that I found. So I took a section and wrote about each one. So even though they were proven not to be the ancestors, I wanted to make sure I really showed my research for each one of them.

Nicole (17m 60s):
That’s really important. So that makes sense why you had all the details there.

Diana (18m 5s):
Right.

Nicole (18m 6s):
Well the next section in the report was about the Cherokee land lottery of 1832. And to summarize, the 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery distributed standard 160-acre land lots to white male Georgia residents. So Diana identified all Dillard fortunate drawers from the lottery and noted their counties of origin and where their land lots were located. While no Dillards drew lots specifically in Cass County through the land lottery, several drew lots in neighboring counties, including William Dillard in Cherokee County. The next part is about the Georgia Gold lottery of eight, the Georgia Gold Lottery of 1832.

Nicole (18m 51s):
And this one proved to be the breakthrough. This one was conducted separately from but concurrent with the Cherokee Land lottery. And it distributed 40 acre parcels in gold bearing areas. The discovery of gold in Cherokee territory in the late 1820s had attracted prospectors and increased pressure for Cherokee removal. For the report, Diana included a map of the 1832 land and gold lotteries and the sections highlighting Cass County and Walker County, not accurately depicted in the map, so she had to deal with that. Diana identified three Dillard men who drew gold lottery lots specifically in Cass County.

Nicole (19m 33s):
And these were James Dillard of Pulaski County. And he was in lot 1119/3, section three, and then Joseph B Dillard of Oglethorpe County Lot 969/2, section three and Roliver, which is probably Tolliver, so Roliver or Toliver Dillard of Burke County Lot 893/3, section three. So these three fortunate drawers represent the highest priority candidates for future research. Their presence in Cass County through land ownership during the early 1830s, placed them in the correct geographic location and time period for Cynthia and her marriage to Thomas B Royston.

Nicole (20m 19s):
So Diana organized all the Dillard lottery winners into a prioritized list based on the county where their land lots were located. Cass County Dillards received top priority, followed by those in neighboring counties (Cherokee, Cobb, Forsythe, Lumpkin, Murray/Gilmer, Paulding, Union, and Walker counties).

Diana (20m 39s):
So after I had eliminated those 1840 Dillards, it was really neat to be able to see that there were more Dillards I could tackle with these lotteries. And it’s always so helpful in the report to create those tables and make a nice list. And that’s what I did with this list of Dillards in that 1832 lottery, and so now I don’t have to try to go back through the records and figure I out. I just have my list and in my list I have whether they were part of the gold or land lottery. And then I have the county of origin, I have the militia district, and then the specific lot and which county it was in.

Diana (21m 21s):
So I’m hoping that as I work down through these different Dillards, I can do the same elimination that I did with phase two. You know, take a look at them and say yes or no. Maybe if there’s one that still is, looks good, I can research him more. Interestingly, just thinking about this, I am looking at Joseph Dillard of Oglethorpe and thinking he is really an interesting candidate because out of all the different Dillard men, the only one that Cynthia named a son after was Joseph. She does have a Joseph in her family. So that makes me wonder, they had a lot of family naming traditions on the Royston side, but I haven’t discovered any on the Dillard side.

Diana (22m 5s):
Hmm. So that might be fun. And Oglethorpe was next to Green County and Morgan County where the Roystons were living. So maybe I’m gonna move Joseph to the top because he sounds interesting

Nicole (22m 18s):
Yeah.

Diana (22m 18s):
for my next project. So you know, after I laid all this out, and it was good to lay it all out, I think after a project where you don’t meet your objective, you know, I didn’t discover her father, but I did get new candidates and it makes you just feel very productive to get it all written out and to realize that you did good research and you have made more progress. And actually, I shouldn’t say I didn’t meet my objective because my objective was to discover a candidate and I did come up with a list of more candidates. So there you go,

Nicole (22m 51s):
There you go.

Diana (22m 52s):
And I always like to address that in the conclusion, you know, what was the objective? Where, where am I with it? And then I just simply went back through and talked about those four Dillard individuals from the 1840 census and how they were all identified and systematically researched and definitely eliminated. And then that I found three new high priority candidates through the gold lottery research. And so I noted that, you know, I hadn’t done any research on them yet. And it might be kind of tricky because those early deed books are missing, but I will tackle other records to try to find out more about them.

Diana (23m 32s):
And then I also noted that the DNA hypothesis linking Elijah Dillard to Cynthia remains a promising lead. I don’t wanna forget about him. And the combination of the documentary evidence and DNA evidence suggested that Cynthia’s father may have had ties to both Cass County, Georgia and southeastern Alabama, where Elijah Dillard later lived. You know, that’s just the hypothesis. And then came up with some future research directions. So I had those three men, James, Joseph, and Roliver or Toliver Dillard that I would tackle next. And I also noted there was that additional DNA work, including something I still need to do, which is find a Y-DNA tester from Elijah Dillard, his descendants, to get a Y line for the Dillards.

Diana (24m 21s):
So very nice to get the report all written up, complete with those future research ideas.

Nicole (24m 28s):
Yeah, it’s such a good feeling to wrap up that phase of research and feel that sense of accomplishment and then still have ideas for what to do next, because you haven’t got the answer yet, so, but I would love to find out if it’s Roliver or not. What a funny name, if that’s truly his name. I’m guessing it’s Toliver I’ve only ever seen Toliver , but you never know. I guess it could be anything.

Diana (24m 53s):
Right. Right.

Nicole (24m 54s):
And maybe it was R. Oliver, you know, like his first initial was R, and then his middle name is Oliver.

Diana (24m 60s):
Yeah, I’ll be excited to do some research and see if I can learn more about that ’cause it is pretty fun to see that name.

Nicole (25m 6s):
But if anyone out there is naming a child soon and needs a unique name, Roliver is always available.

Diana (25m 12s):
And then the nickname could be Rollie.

Nicole (25m 16s):
Hey, that’s kind of cute. I mean, Ollie and Oliver is definitely cuter, but if you wanna be unique, there’s always Rollie. I mean, that sounds like, well, Raleigh is like their last name. Yeah, Rollie. It’s just spelled different.

Diana (25m 29s):
Make it very confusing for that poor child.

Nicole (25m 34s):
Well, let’s talk about some tips for writing a research report. We’ve had a great example from Diana for how to write up a report, especially a report that’s kind of hard to write because you don’t have that excitement of having the answer. You’re just writing up a progress report basically of, you know, candidates that were eliminated, new candidates were found, and the direction for the next phase. But it’s important to write those reports even when they’re not fun. And so let’s talk about some different principles that guided the writing of this research report. So number one, document everything. Every claim was supported by properly formatted source citations. When the sources were accessed online, Diana included access dates.

Nicole (26m 13s):
And when she used AI tools like Claude to summarize historical context, she cited that as well. And number two, show your work. By detailing the research in previous phases, she demonstrated that this wasn’t random searching, but a systematic reasoned approach building on prior work. And the third tip is to be honest about limitations, acknowledging there were missing deed books. And the constraints of online research helps build credibility and helps future researchers understand the boundaries of the work. And in this case, the future researcher is just herself probably. But it is helpful to know that those deed books weren’t available and that this was an online phase so that the next phase doesn’t have to re-look for those missing deed books and can also expand into offline sources if needed.

Nicole (27m 3s):
The fourth tip is think geographically and historically. Understanding the formation of Cass County, the Cherokee removal and the lottery systems provided essential context that led to identifying new candidates. So that part was really important. Tip number five, create clear next steps. The prioritized list of lottery winners gave future researchers specific names and locations to investigate rather than vague directions. So if mom never gets around to doing this again and I have to pick it up, then we’ll know what to do next because she’s prioritized the people in order. So that’s really great. Tip number six is to use visual aids.

Nicole (27m 43s):
So this report had maps showing all kinds of things, and she specifically focused on the land lot locations and census district boundaries to help readers visualize the geographic relationships that were central to their research and to see where everyone is and who’s closer and whatnot. And number seven, combine multiple evidence types. And the most powerful analysis came from combining documentary evidence, land lotteries, census records, deed records with DNA analysis results from earlier phases. So these are some great tips about writing reports that came specifically from this report that Diana wrote. Hopefully these were helpful.

Diana (28m 23s):
Well, I feel like I learned something with every single project, and this one was no different. It’s always really interesting to dig into a new area and a new bit of historical context. So even though I didn’t solve the mystery of Cynthia’s father, I do have those three specific candidates. And sometimes that’s all we can ask for in these complex research scenarios. So for anyone who would like to read the entire report, see how I put that all together, you can find that on the blog post associated with this series. It’s Cynthia Dillard’s Father Candidate Phase Four, and you can go read that blog post and see, you know, how I, how I wrote the report.

Diana (29m 7s):
I have loved having AI to help me to write some of the background information and some of the summary of results and conclusion. That’s just been so helpful. And I think really eliminates the roadblock that we might have of trying to write out our research. So you can maybe get some ideas about how to use AI as well in writing and how I cited that you’d see the parts that were just me writing and the parts that AI helped me. So hopefully everyone enjoyed this series on Cynthia Dillard. I am going to tackle her again for the DNA study group coming up and you know, return a bit to the DNA and tackle these three candidates and see what I can find.

Diana (29m 49s):
So I am, I’m excited after taking a break for a few months to to go back to Cynthia and see what I can find.

Nicole (29m 56s):
That’s so great that you’re gonna keep working on it. And also, I did go ahead and add a link to the report into the show notes for this episode so you can see it right there and you can read that report.

Diana (30m 7s):
Oh, thank you for doing that. That’s great. All right everyone, thanks for listening, and we will talk to you next time.

Nicole (30m 15s):
Bye

Diana (30m 15s):
Bye-Bye.

Nicole (30m 13s):
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.