Brick Wall -- Dissolved?

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My longest standing brick wall has been DISSOLVED, thanks to lectures by Alexis Hacker Scholz on using probate and Carol Friedel using LucidChart for genealogy. I'm also advocating getting enough sleep and awakening slowly, and just thinking, before springing out of bed. 💤 That is where my inspiration arose, on my pillow. 

If we've met and talked about genealogy, you have heard about my McBees and the mystery William McBee, known only as a name on his son Samuel B's death certificate. After Alexis' probate lecture, the gears were turning about how to look for probate files - but where to look? When I heard Carol thinking aloud, and saw her charting out a mystery DNA match, something clicked. The descendancies she was charting look like the Ancestry.com Thrulines®, so why not mine those and see if William's purported father, George Henry McBee and Martha 'Patsey' Willis, could be proven to be his parents? Not just by DNA matches, but by records.

Thrulines® in Action

For those of you who have not used Thrulines®, here is an easy one charting matches through our mutual great-grandfather, Samuel B. McBee, and his grandmother Patsey:

Thrulines® of descendants of Samuel B. McBee; people already in my tree

Off I went to Thrulines®, where I found that George Henry McBee and Martha 'Patsey' Willis have 26 charted matches to me. I'll check my sister and cousins' Thrulines® later, and see if they have even more matches, but one step at a time. Of course some of the matches were already in my tree since we connect more closely than George and Patsey, as in the example above. 

Wondering...

Amazingly, other finds were people about whom I had been wondering for *years.* Notice the word "wondering"? Back in the day, finding a family in the US Census was a breakthrough. I'll never forget the first time I located my mother-in-law's family in the 1930 Census in Keith County, Nebraska! Now I don't wonder, I research. It's so easy to just use the search engines and find people, and answer those questions, and of course, generate new questions, and mysteries. But William was a brick wall, so I just wondered. 

All in One Tree

Yesterday I found another reason to do most research in my own tree, not a separate tree. I did great work on Elijah McBee (my William's nephew) in a separate tree, and yesterday I had to redo quite a bit of that record retrieval, which is not that interesting. I'm glad I agree with my research of two years ago, but also wish I didn't have to redo it!

I'm not saying that the research ahead will be simple; there is lots of work to be done, and I'm sure that some of the connections that Thrulines® suggests will be proven to be slightly or even very wrong. Here is a far more complicated chart for George Henry's mother Nancy Hale--It is still Women's History Month, after all!

Thrulines® through one son of Nancy E Hale McBee, 1767-1853

Other Sites, and Other Tools

I intend to rely not only on Thrulines®, but also to chart and then put into my tree matches I have on 23andMe, MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, and Gedmatch. I think I even have some McBee/Willis/Smith etc. matches on LivingDNA. This is where the charting tools that Carol demonstrated will come in handy. However the largest number of matches are on Ancestry.com, so that's a great place to start. As Carol also demonstrated, sometimes there are multiple lines of DNA connection, which can help make sense of the amount of shared DNA. This will be necessary with these endogamous families of McBees, Willises, Smiths and other associated families.

Of course DNA is not the only valuable tool. Connecting with researcher-cousins on Ancestry, FamilySearch, Twitter, Groups.io, Facebook and my old blog brings joy to the search. Collaboration is fun! DNA testing is collaborative by nature, since the results are meaningless without comparison. 

A research plan is still necessary, timelines make sense of the records, maps help us make sense of the world our ancestors inhabited, the FAN Club adds critical context to what we're finding, and the GPS helps us prove our conclusions trustworthy. And land, tax, military and probate records add depth to the stories that the census and birth, marriage and death records outline.

Thinking back to just last week, I am amazed that I never before thought of using the tool that was right at hand to attack this long-standing brick wall. Today I'm realizing that the barrier truly was only in my own head. Thank goodness that over the years I've built up some research skills and strategies that allow me to exploit these research tools, and solve family mysteries along the way to finally dissolve it.

I think this story illustrates why we need continuing education. You never know when a speaker or book will wake you up to possibilities you have not yet dreamed about. 😴


Valorie Zimmerman



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