Piggy-back

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Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In this season of celebration, I would like to celebrate piggy-back riding. We all do it, whether we know it or not! Every time we use a genealogy website with "hints," those hints are based on the work that other researchers have done, connecting images and records to families and individuals. Search algorithms are written by programmers who may know nothing about quality genealogical research, but do know how to code search parameters that will yield good results for us. 

The image of riding piggy-back, or giving others a ride, perhaps came so strongly to mind this week, because out of the blue, I got an email from a researcher, Antoinette, who found one of the profiles I worked on years ago, in the family of my son-in-law Jason. His 2nd-great-grandmother, Martha Caroline Carter, was born in February 1856 in Wayne County, Missouri, and died after 1910 probably in Colorado. 

The email revealed that Antoinette is descended from Martha's sister Amanda, and that they also had a brother! I had been unable to find any information about Martha before her marriage, so these names and dates were a gold-mine!



Naturally, eventually hints showed up, and I was also able to use "Member Connect" to see what records other researchers had found without waiting for hints to appear. This only works for people whose deaths are confirmed either by records or passage of time. Member Connect now shows in Ancestry.com menus under Tools. It works best if you "connect" to those researchers whose judgement you value, and those who seem to be actually researching the same person you are.


In another sense, when you use one site to research, then use your findings to leverage another, you are piggy-backing too. We advocated for this tactic in The Power of Three, and Adventures in Genealogy: Connecting the Dots, and it really works! Once the descendency research is done on these new family lines, it's time to move over to FamilySearch and see what new records and other information can be unearthed. It all ends up on Wikitree, which is especially important because of this family's heritage, which is Black.

Here is the most important part. When I added in Martha's siblings to the tree and searched again, look: 

1870 United States Federal Census, Pilot Knob, Iron, Missouri, page 83B, page 4 [penned], line 30, Dwelling 32, Grace Carter family, Roll M593_780; Ancestry.com : accessed 22 December 2023.


I hope the image is large enough to read. We found their mother or grandmother! Grace Carter in 1870 was 60, which means she was born in 1810! For a Black family, this is amazing, and when I read the record, it was a bolt of lightning. Also, when Simon died, his father Wm. Carter is named in the Illinois Death Index. It is possible that to go further back, we'll have to search the Freedman's Bank or Bureau in order to find the records of the last slaveholder. 

So the work is not over, but I'm grateful for all the "piggy-back rides" and do my best to help others get those rides too!


As a final Christmas surprise, I checked Antoinette's profile, and she's a DNA match to me and my sister. Small match (10 cM), but still. AND she matches with a maternal cousin which means she matches on my mom's side.

Exciting times!





Valorie Zimmerman


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