We all have brick-wall ancestors, and often they are the women in our family tree. In this 52 ancestors post, I share more about Clemsy Cline, one of my third great-grandmothers without a well-documented trail leading to her parents. When I first started researching Clemsy, other researchers attributed John Cline and Mrs. John Cline as her parents, so I added them to my tree. I’ve looked at Clemsy through the years but not known exactly...
Despite our best intentions, we all make mistakes as we fill out our family tree. Perhaps we were baby genealogists and simply didn’t know how to analyze records or maybe we were copying another cousin’s tree without verifying the information. For whatever reason, errors can be corrected and we can improve the veracity of our tree. An early mistake I made in my research was attaching the wrong parents to my ancestor, Malissa (Welch) Harris....
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Marsha Hoffman Rising’s book, The Family Tree Problem Solver. Originally published in 2005, with a second edition in 2011, and a third edition in 2019, this book is a great resource for learning how to overcome challenges in our family tree. She covers difficult record types, record loss, cluster methodology, and more. Join us as we discuss several tips from the book and our thoughts about...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is an interview with Certified Genealogist® Kimball Carter. We discuss Kimballs’ fourth great grandmother, Anne Carter, and the challenging research he undertook to determine her identity and relationships. Anne died in 1789 in Westmoreland County, Virginia and appears in numerous family trees and authored works as the wife of Thomas Carter. Her maiden name was given variously as Neale, Hunter, or Claytor. Kimball noticed some discrepancies in the...
Censuses and vital records are the backbones of genealogical research. Finding ancestors on every census and discovering their vital records can help a researcher begin to identify an ancestor and the familial relationships for that ancestor. Land and probate records are also valuable sources. But what happens when a search of these records doesn’t yield many results? Additional (and often less-used) records can then be examined with the goal of finding clues that will lead...
What is the FAN Club and how do you use it in your research? When working on family history, we tend to forget about all the people that our ancestors interacted with beyond their household. Just like you interact with many people beyond your household, so did our ancestors! To aid in researching our ancestors and those that they knew, Elizabeth Shown Mills developed the FAN club principle. She defined the FAN club as the...
If you’ve been following this series of DNA blog posts, you are ready to create a research objective and move ahead in your genetic genealogy journey. With access to DNA results and information about matching relatives, you now have a tool that is like a sledgehammer that can break down brick walls in your family history research. DNA alone does not tell you anything about your family history. But when it is used in conjunction...
In our podcast episode today, I’m discussing my research project to discover the parents of Lucinda Keaton of Pendleton, Anderson County, South Carolina. Diana and I will review what I knew when I started the project, how I found clues leading to a hypothesis that her father was William Keaton of Pendleton District, South Carolina, and what records I searched to prove the hypothesis. We’ll discuss each step in the research like a pro process,...
Today I’m sharing two pieces of exciting news: I solved my Keaton brick wall, and Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide is now available on paperback! After editing, formatting, and preparing work samples for the book for the last two months, I have become very familiar with the process. To check it out, click here: Research Like a Pro on Amazon. Learning to research like a pro is what helped me solve my brick wall,...
