RLP 394: When Birthdates Don’t Agree: Analyzing and Correlating Evidence

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 394: When Birthdates Don’t Agree: Analyzing and Correlating 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. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (48s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (51s):
I’m doing well. I’ve been working on the 14 Day Challenge and just having a good time learning about Alexander Keaton and, you know, I think his father’s probably Ephraim Keaton and that’s what I hypothesized in my last research report where I was researching Ephraim’s brother James to try to find James’s children. And I think Alexander’s not James’ son, I think he’s Ephraim’s son just based on proximity of land records and things. So it’ll be interesting to make a research plan based on what I have because I’ve already found a few things. So I need to like try to think of what else is out there to find, because in my last year’s project I did use Full Text Search, so I already kind of found some things but I didn’t really dive deep.

Nicole (1m 32s):
So that’ll have to be…

Diana (1m 35s):
Nice.

Nicole (1m 35s):
I think I just tried to find something in Full Text Search, but I didn’t look for everything.

Diana (1m 41s):
And that’s tricky because it’s hard to know if you have exhausted that resource because more things may have been added since you last looked.

Nicole (1m 49s):
Right. And what I will probably do is actually look at the FamilySearch catalog and see what record types I want to look in and see if they’ve been included in Full Text Search.

Diana (1m 60s):
Perfect.

Nicole (2m 0s):
And I do my plan and then it can be a little bit more detailed.

Diana (2m 5s):
Yeah, then you’ll know That’s what I like to do too, is just get a specific collection and use Full Text Search within that collection. So much better than just doing the broad one because, well there’s a, there’s a place for the broad Full Text Search as well because then you pick up hits in counties that you weren’t expecting. The uses are different. So you gotta do both.

Nicole (2m 26s):
Yep, it’s a good point. How’s your research coming on the 14 Day challenge?

Diana (2m 30s):
Well, I’m just getting started and I haven’t done anything on this individual. This is Samuel Daniel who advertised for John Roystan as the runaway apprentice that we talked about a few episodes ago. So I’m really excited to tackle Mr. Daniel and see who was he and why was he apprenticing my ancestor John and and was he a bad dude and that’s why John ran away or was John the bad dude? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll find the answers, but I’m excited to dig into the research and I was working on the locality guide yesterday and having AI help me. It was so fun because I did the same prompt in all the major large language models and Claude actually did a really nice guide for me.

Diana (3m 13s):
I liked it so much it had the links, everything was really easy to see. It wasn’t too much. You know sometimes if you do a locality guide, I’ve, I’ve done that with Deep Research in ChatGPT and had like 200 pages come up. It was way too much. But this was just the right amount of information. So what I discovered was that, unlike Gloucester County where the Roystans lived, Middlesex County where Samuel Daniel sent his advertisement from, I’m hoping that’s where he is from, did not have the same record loss because one of their county clerks way back when hid the records rather than sending them to Richmond when the British were or would’ve been the Civil War, he hid them.

Diana (3m 58s):
And so they have records that go way back. Isn’t that so cool?

Nicole (4m 2s):
Yeah.

Diana (4m 3s):
So anyway, I am always amazed and this is like right next to Gloucester County, so very same area and I’m hoping I’ll really find some new information that will help me with this little fun research in Colonial America.

Nicole (4m 19s):
Yeah, that is fun. And it is a different time period than a lot of people usually do. Colonial times were really different and can be harder and in some ways just a little bit more unique as far as the way that things worked and the like handwriting is a little different and there’s more historical terms to kind of figure out what they mean and all of that so it adds some complexity.

Diana (4m 41s):
Right.

Nicole (4m 43s):
Well we are excited to share again about our Merging and Separating Identities course that the Research Like a Pro Institute is sponsoring and so let’s hear a little bit more about that. Imagine finally proving which of four possible fathers belongs to your ancestor after years of being stuck. That’s what genealogist participants learned to do in Jan Joyce’s course Merging and Separating Identities, this isn’t your typical genealogy institute course. Over a multi-week course you’ll tackle the field’s toughest challenge, distinguishing between people who share names, places, or both. Jan has a great team of expert instructors, Kristen Botanic, myself, Nicole Dyer, Patty Hobbs, Lynn Nelson and Kim Richardson.

Nicole (5m 28s):
Together they bring decades of expertise in solving complex identity cases. You’ll master identity dossiers that organize every piece of evidence, learn when to merge records and when to separate them and discover correlation techniques that reveal hidden connections. Work through real world case studies including DNA strategies, mapping tools and even AI applications. Plus, you’ll practice on a specially curated data set with expert guidance every step of the way. Spots will fill it fast for this unique course. Visit the FamilyLocket website and click on Shop then Institute Courses to learn more and register for this dynamic Merging and Separating Identities course and finally break through those identity roadblocks. The course runs weekly on Thursdays from April 30th through June 11th, 2026 at 9:00 AM through 2:30 PM Mountain time.

Nicole (6m 15s):
So we’re excited to see those who’ve registered and we hope several more will register. For this year’s Research Like a Pro Webinar Series we are looking forward to February’s webinar with Sunni Mohammadbhoy and she is going to be teaching us about her fantastic case from, for, From Georgia to Florida: Reconstructing the Family of Seth Howard Through DNA and Historical Evidence. And this is about her ancestor, Seth Howard, who was born in 1804 in Georgia and migrated to the territory of Florida in 1816. He is a registered “Florida Pioneer” with the Florida Genealogical Society and is well researched by professional Genealogists and his numerous descendants. Yet the identity of his parents was never discovered.

Nicole (6m 58s):
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. And she’ll go over several topics including DNA Gedcom, Clustering, BanyanDNA, Pedigree Collapse, Pedigree Triangulation, Georgia Land Lotteries, the Patriot War, Frontier Migration, Tax and Court records, 19th-Century Research, FAN Club, Correlation of Documentary Evidence, Segment Triangulation, Y-DNA, Deeds and Probate.

Nicole (7m 42s):
So we’re excited to hear from Sunni about this and she is a wonderful researcher. She was one of our peer group leaders in our last study group. She has been in our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group. She has a B.A. in Actuarial Science from Florida State University and worked for many years as a pension consultant and later became a stay at home mom and an office manager for her husband’s business. And she is a great researcher and I’m excited for her to share this research with us. Our next study group is beginning February 4th and registration closes really soon. So make sure you register.

Nicole (8m 22s):
You have a few more days, it closes on February 1st. So if you’re thinking about doing a Research Like a Pro with DNA project, make sure you register now and if you’d like to be a peer group leader in one of our upcoming study groups in the fall and forward, then please apply on our website because you can receive complimentary registration. Join our newsletter, it comes out every Monday and you’ll get notifications of new blog posts, new lectures, new courses. We’re offering coupon codes and things like that. We are busily getting ready for the RootsTech conference on March 5th through 7th and we will be there in Salt Lake City at an exhibitor booth and we’ll both be speaking at at the conference as well. So we hope to see a lot of you there and it will be a fun conference.

Diana (9m 3s):
Lots of exciting things to look forward with research and learning. Well today we are going to talk all about one of the children of my Cynthia Dillard Royston and Thomas Beverly Royston. And the reason I did a little research mini project on this gal was because I’m really trying hard to track down a marriage date for Cynthia and Thomas. They don’t have a marriage record despite all of my best efforts to find one, find one. And it’s really tricky when you do not have that. And then if you have got some other information that doesn’t necessarily agree, then you have to decide what is the best.

Diana (9m 45s):
So we’re always looking for those dates, births, marriages, deaths, residence, and more, so before a jurisdiction mandated birth certificates, we sometimes get lucky and have a family bible record or a church record, a newspaper notice, a letter or other non-governmental source that may have recorded the birth of a child. However, you know, after so long those sources just may not have survived even if they were initially created. So we often have to rely on a source that’s created later in a person’s life to help pin down a birth date. So what does a birth date have to do with Cynthia and Thomas’s marriage date?

Diana (10m 28s):
Well this is their oldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth Royston, who married a Slagel, and I am really looking at estimates and recorded birth dates for her. Recorded birth dates, as in later in her life, to try to figure out, you know, which year was she actually born because the records all give different days and different years depending on the source. So I wrote a blog post, kind of did a mini mini project within a blog post to just look at every single one of the sources and analyze it for the type of source, the informant and the reliability. And each one of them does provide direct evidence of her birth, but they can’t all be accurate because they are different.

Diana (11m 16s):
So I used census records and she is listed in every census record from 1840 to the 1900s except for that 1891 that was lost. And we can learn a lot from census records. So let’s just back up and think about what those are. They are original sources. They were created by US Marshals and then later in 1880 and beyond by an enumerator who was going through an area and recording information about each household. Before 1850 only the household head was named and tick marks indicated others in the appropriate age and gender columns.

Diana (11m 58s):
So the residence can be considered primary information because the person recording the census knew what county, township or district he assigned, was assigned to. However, all the other household information is undetermined because we don’t know the informant’s identity. It was supposed to be the head of household, but as you know, if you are out in a very rural area and the head of household is not home, you’ll take the information from whoever is in the house. So only in 1940 do we get a mark that tells us who the informant was. So let’s take a look at the first census where our subject Mary Elizabeth Royston was counted.

Diana (12m 39s):
And this is 1840 census of DeKalb County, Alabama and this is the first census that names the Thomas Beverly Royston household. So he’s married now and has children. And interestingly with these censuses, when the law was written that they were to be taken, there was a specific day it was supposed to be taken. So the census for 1840 was June 1st, 1840 and the US Marshals were to count everyone in a household who was present on that day and they had nine months to complete the task, but it was extended to 18 months. As the only female child in a household, Mary can be identified as age five to 10 and that would put her birth between 1830 and 1835.

Diana (13m 27s):
And then based on later census records, I’ve been able to identify the other household members. There was a male zero to five who would be her younger brother Ulysses born about 1837 and Charles born about 1839 and there were five males age 30 to 40, so one of those was Thomas and then the others were probably farm workers or boarders. For females we have the one daughter, Mary Elizabeth age five to 10, and then Cynthia who was between the 20 and 30 or in the 20 to 30 bracket.

Nicole (13m 60s):
Great job. It’s interesting correlating, you know, the names we know for our family with a census where it just lists the head of household and then the ages of everyone else like well this is probably Cynthia, she’s the only adult female and this is probably the daughter Mary, but who are all those five men age 30 to 40. I think you’re right, they’re probably boarders or farm workers, but it’s just interesting like who are all these guys?

Diana (14m 23s):
Sure wish they were named

Nicole (14m 25s):
Right and probably other people wish they were named too. I mean, which ancestors can’t be found in the 1840 census of someone because they’re just grouped in with a bunch of other guys. So.

Diana (14m 36s):
Right when we’re missing people, that’s likely what happened.

Nicole (14m 39s):
By 1850 the Royston family had grown to include seven more children. Mary Elizabeth Royston, the oldest child was noted only as Mary and her age of 15 gives a birth year of 1835. The census day in 1850 was June 1st, 1850 and the US Marshals had five months to conduct this census. Britton Stamps, Assistant Marshal, visited the Royston household on November 5th. Mary had attended school within the year. The household included Thomas 47, Cynthia, age 35, Mary who was 15, Ulysses age 13, Baldwin who was 10, Adeline was eight, Sarah was six, Joseph was four, Benjamin was four, Robert was three, and Thomas B was zero.

Nicole (15m 25s):
Then the next record we have to analyze for her is her 1855 marriage in Chambers County, Alabama. Mary E Royston married Joseph Slagel on January 30th, 1855 at the home of her father, Thomas B Royston. Her marriage license shows that a bond for $200 was posted between Joseph Slagel and Thomas B Royston. So then the actual text of this is very similar to what you would expect for a marriage record. Be it remembered that on the 29th day of January A.D., 1855, Joseph Slagel made application for marriage license and filed in this office of Judge of Probate Court the following bond, the state of Alabama, Chambers County know all men by these presents that we, Joseph Slagel and Thomas B Royston are held and firmly bound unto the state of Alabama in the penal sum of $200 for payment of which well and truly to be made.

Nicole (16m 17s):
We bind ourselves and each and every of our heirs, executors or administrators jointly, and severally, firmly by these presents sealed with our seals and dated the 29th day of January A.D., 1855. The condition of the above obligation is such that if there should be no lawful cause why Joseph Slagel and Mary E Royston should not be joined together in the Holy Union of matrimony, then this obligation to be void, otherwise to remain in full force and virtue signed. Sealed and delivered in the presence of Joseph Slagel, Samuel Pearson, Thomas B. Royston and Samuel Pearson was the judge of the probate. Then we have the license.

Nicole (16m 56s):
So the license says where upon the following license was issued the state of Alabama Chambers County To any Ordained or Licensed Minister of the Gospel, Judge of Probate or Circuit Court, or Justice of the Peace, in and for Said County, Greeting: you are hereby authorized to celebrate the rights of matrimony between Joseph Slagel and Mary E Royston and this shall be your sufficient authority for so doing given under my hand and seal this 29th day of January AD 1855 and of American Independence the 79th year, Samuel Pearson, Judge of Probate. The final portion of this marriage record is the certification that it was done and it says I certify that I celebrated the rights of matrimony between Joseph Slagel at the house of Thomas B Royston on the 30th day of January AD, 1855.

Nicole (17m 47s):
William Gregs JP. So it didn’t say his wife’s name but maybe that was left out accidentally. Who knows? That’s funny. Joseph Slagel got married at Thomas B Royston’s house.

Diana (17m 60s):
They got married, after all of that. Well I was really curious about that marriage bond and I wondered if it could provide any information about Mary’s age at the time of her marriage. And so I chatted with the AI model ChatGPT 5.1 and I gave it the text of the bond and asked it to look for the Alabama law on marriage bonds. I also provided Mary’s age of 20 at the time of marriage and the response gives some food for thought. So first of all, the large language model ChatGPT said what the law said versus what the record shows that Alabama’s 1850 code did require parental consent and a $200 bond for minor 16 to 17 marrying.

Diana (18m 43s):
But your example shows Chambers County using that same $200 no lawful cause bond form even when the bride was already 20. So clearly the form was used more broadly than just for minors. So in practice in this county, the bond looks like a standard licensed bond, not a special minor only form. So that was interesting. What her father is bondsman actually tells us, given that Mary was 20, her father’s role as surety means things like he was a financially responsible man. The court was willing to accept as surety he was alive present in the county and in some ongoing relationship with her, almost certainly her resident father, he was effectively endorsing the marriage even if the law did not require his consent at her age.

Diana (19m 26s):
What it does not tell us, it does not prove she was under 18 or under 21. It does not establish any precise age bracket for her at best without outside age evidence. You might have cautiously said the combination of a standard marriage bond and the bride’s father as surety could suggest she was still a young unmarried daughter in his household. But your independent evidence that she was 20 shows why we have to treat that as weak, not determinative evidence. In this specific 1855 Alabama example, a marriage bond signed by the bride’s father does not demonstrate she was underage. It’s circumstantial evidence of relationship and social context but not reliable age evidence on its own.

Diana (20m 9s):
So I thought that was really an interesting analysis. What I have learned from studying various books on, for instance, Women and the Law by Marilyn Salmon, was there may have been a law, but it doesn’t mean that they followed it like they were supposed to or they sometimes just kind of did what they wanted to in different counties. So it was an interesting idea that they used this bond, you know, for whatever purpose they wanted to have a bond. So anyway, I thought that was, that was kind of a fun little rundown by AI on the situation.

Nicole (20m 45s):
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of marriage bonds and we even did a couple posts and podcasts about different bonds and things and why they’re needed and what I found in the research I did on marriage bonds was that often the other bondsmen on the marriage bond was a relative of the bride. Before I did looked into that, I, I kind of always assumed it would’ve been like a, a friend of the groom, but it seemed more common that the bondsman was someone on the bride’s family.

Diana (21m 18s):
Yeah. And you know, we could use that to really help us understand things that, to how things were done in that county or in that era. Sometimes there is no specific law but you just see the same thing happening over and over. So I don’t know if you would call that the culture of the area, but that’s an important thing to keep in mind how everybody was doing it can be an important thing.

Nicole (21m 43s):
Yeah. And AI may not have found the law. I mean it’s hard to do. You have to go look in the law books and see what was the establishment of the procedure for marriage bonds and licenses and whatnot.

Diana (21m 56s):
Absolutely. And I can’t remember, I usually go check all the sources and I can’t remember. I probably did, but yeah, of course I would not use this in, you know, in a proof argument or anything. It was just kind of a fun exercise to see what AI would come up with as I was working.

Nicole (22m 11s):
It is a helpful thing to do. I think it’s a helpful starting point too because it gets you thinking about things and I can help you understand what clues are in the text. So transcribing the bond and the license and then giving it to AI, it can read the words in there and tell you what, what those are pointing to, what clues they’re pointing to as far as if there were laws that mandated certain things and, and so yeah, it’s definitely a helpful step and it’s frankly kind of interesting and fun to check and see what the AI can do.

Diana (22m 43s):
Right.

Nicole (22m 44s):
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Nicole (23m 26s):
Make this year the year that you fill in the gaps. Visit newspapers.com/FamilyLocket today for a 20% off subscription. Well next we’ll look at additional census records from Mary and the 1860 census of Chambers County, Alabama includes her in the household of her husband, Joseph Slagel. Her age of 26 gives a possible birth year of 1834. The Assistant Marshall Jasper Harris was to take the count of the household as of June 1st and he reached the household on September 7th. The Slagel’s lived next door to Thomas B Royston’s household. Joseph, as the head of the household, was to provide the information and although we don’t know for certain if he gave Mary’s age, it does provide a possible alternate year of birth.

Nicole (24m 14s):
The household included Joseph Slagel, age 38, a farmer born in South Carolina, Mary E Slagel, age 26, a female born in Alabama, William K Slagel, age five, a male born in Alabama, and Sarah T Slagel, age three, a female born in Alabama. Going to the next census in 1870, we have the Slagel family who has grown considerably with four additional children born to Mary, age 35. Again, we don’t know the informant, but her birth year of 1835 is consistent with earlier census records. Assistant Marshall B Hawkins visited the household on August 15th, 1870 and the census day was June 1st. So we have Joseph age 51, Mary age 35, William 14, Lula age 12, Julia 10, Cordelia, age eight, tommy age three, and Adeline age one.

Diana (25m 6s):
Okay, so 1880, they’re still right there in Chambers County, Alabama and this goes back to the alternate birth year of 1834 for Mary. So we’re switching back and forth between 1834 and 1835. The census day was June 1st and Enumerator CC Davis visited the household on July 14th, 1880. And we have everyone aging appropriately. Joseph is 58, Mary is 46, Lula 22, Julia 20, Cadelia 18, Thomas 13 and Adeline 11. And next we have the 1900 census because sadly we have lost the 1890 census, so we have to skip 20 years and by now, Mary is a widow and she is the head of household.

Diana (25m 53s):
Interestingly this time her name is written as Mary M Slagel and this census asks for many more details. Her birthdate is clearly listed as May, 1834 and her age is 66. Enumerator Frederick Johnson visited the household on June 14th, 1900 just two weeks after the census day of June 1st. So we have Mary M Slagel, age 66, widowed, mother of six children, five living and still in the household are her three older daughters, Julia, age 40, Cordelia, age 36, and Addie age 31. And then in 1910 the census day was changed to April 1st and Enumerator Zachariah A.

Diana (26m 37s):
Kitchens visited the household on April 21st. Unlike the other censuses which were taken after Mary’s birthday in May, this one was taken a month before and her age of 73 is clearly off. The informant is unknown. And even if it were a household member, they might not have remembered exactly how old Mary was at the time. We have Mary age 73, Delia age 45, and Addie age 40. So this would put Mary with a birth year of 1837, which is quite different from the 1834 and 35 we have in other censuses.

Nicole (27m 18s):
Well let’s look now at death records. Mary died on December 23rd, 1915 in Chambers County, Alabama where she lived her entire life almost. Three records give birth information, a newspaper death notice, her death certificate and her headstone. Determining the informant can help analyze the conflicting dates. First, the death notice, five days after Mary’s death, The LaFayette Sun published an obituary written by CE Higgins, the obituary states her birth as May 20th, 1835. From the text it seems that CE Higgins was a neighbor and a friend. Further research could discover more about Higgins and here is the text of the obituary, “In Memoriam.

Nicole (28m 3s):
At four o’clock on the morning of Dec. 23rd, as the moonbeams shed their sombre light over earth’s hill and vale, and as the old year smiled back as it took its parting adieu, the sweet spirit of our neighbor and friend—Mrs. Mary Slagle—took its flight to its eternal home and the God who gave it. She was born May the 20th, 1835; she was married to Mr. Joseph Slagle, and resided in this community all her life; she was a kind and affectionate wife, a loving mother of six children, whom she raised to man-and womanhood. She will be missed by hosts of neighbors and friends, one of whom is C.

Nicole (28m 47s):
E. Higgins., Roanoke, Alabama, Route one. Okay, now let’s look at the death certificate. Mary’s death certificate provides some birth information in the form of her age at death of 81 years. She died in 1915. So the calculated birth year is 1834. The reporter was John P. Tiles, who was not a family member. Further research could discover more about him. On the certificate of death it says full name of deceased Mary Slagel. Date of death, December 23rd, 1915, 4:00 AM place of death. Chambers County, Beat two. Jumping down a little bit says age years 81.

Nicole (29m 30s):
But the months and the days was left blank and she’s listed as widowed. The reporter was John P Liles or I think Tiles was another option for his name. And then the date of the report was January 1st, 1915, but maybe should be 1916. Not sure which date is correct there probably. Oh, because it was January. Yeah, she died in December of 1915. And then the date of report was January 1st, 1916.

Diana (30m 1s):
Right. This death certificate was just seemed a little hastily filled out and you know, we’ve all made that mistake. We turn over the new year, keep writing the old date, 1915 instead of converting to the new one. So this was, it was good though. I was glad to have a death certificate for her. And the final record was her cemetery gravestone. We don’t know the informant, but you know, it’s generally the family. And her husband had already died, so maybe one of her daughters or one of her other children. You know, she had the three that were in the household with her up until her death. But maybe one of her married children, we don’t know, but they probably put their heads together and figured out a birthday and they wrote May 4th, 1834 as her birthdate.

Diana (30m 50s):
And on the the gravestone, it is very, very clear. Sometimes we wonder if, you know, if we’re reading it correctly, but this one, the, the dates absolutely stand out. So it has her middle name too, which I love names her as Mary Elizabeth Slagel. May 4th, 1834, December 23rd, 1915. So what was my final conclusion after going through all of that? Well the census records all give the birthplace of Alabama for Mary, and that is good because in tracing her father, Thomas Beverly Royston, we see that he was in Cass County Georgia in 1834 where he was the deputy sheriff and he’s advertising Cass Sheriff’s sales in newspapers between March and May, 1834.

Diana (31m 42s):
So he was pretty sure, we’re pretty sure he was there in Georgia. But on April 14th, 1835, a year later, he’s listed under the R section as someone with letters left at the post office in Cassville, Georgia. So that led lends me to believe that the Roystons moved across the state line from Cass County, Georgia to DeKalb County, Alabama between June, 1834 and May, 1835 when Mary was born. Thomas applied for a land patent in 1842 in Alabama. And a witness statement indicates he lived on the land with a family since before January, 1837.

Diana (32m 25s):
So another little piece of evidence about when he moved. So the analysis and correlation gives the best date for Mary as May 4th, 1835. Her birthplace was almost certainly DeCalb County, Alabama, which was Thomas’s residence per the 1840 census and the land application file. So it took all the research I’d done on her as well as the research I’d done on her father to nail down the best state. Do I know for sure if that’s absolutely accurate? No, but it is my best conclusion based on all the available evidence. So if you have something similar, all of you listeners, maybe this gave you some idea about how you really can go through every single census, all the death records, everything you can pull together to try to nail down the best date for one of your ancestors.

Nicole (33m 18s):
Wow, that was a great example of pulling all the evidence together, correlating things, looking at the informants and trying to figure out the best evidence for her birthdate. Great job.

Diana (33m 30s):
Well thank you. And I probably would’ve gone with the 1834 birth year if I didn’t find that information in Cass County, Georgia with Thomas clearly there through May, 1834. So, and it really helped having the two different birth years back and forth between 34 and 35 to know that we were very close, you know, so anyway, it was good. It was good to have it all pulled together.

Nicole (33m 55s):
Yes, absolutely. Alright everyone, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode and we’ll talk to you again next week. Bye

Diana (34m 2s):
Bye-Bye.

Nicole (33m 57s):
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.