kellytf via pixabay.com: Public Domain Have you ever discovered something shocking in your research? I've found terrible tragedies, murders, accidents, and such, but not often something that blindsided—jolted me physically. To be "blindsided" means to be caught completely off guard by an unexpected event, particularly one that is harmful, distressing, or leaves you unprepared to react, according to Dictionary.com. Google adds that the term originated in sports like football—referring to a blindside tackle, a hit delivered from outside a player's field of vision. I shouldn't have been shocked to find Alexander Hamilton (not the famous one) in this place and time as a slaveholder, or to see his name in the 1850 Slave Schedule in Grainger County, Tennessee. But my research there so far had turned up little evidence of slaveholding, so I'd neglected to seek out those records. I'm not alone—few other researchers on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or WikiTree had li...

Dorothea-Lange-Florence-Thompson-and-her-children-in-a-pea-pickers-camp.- Nipomo-California.-March-1936; courtesy of PBS Until you begin the hunt, you never know what you'll find . When I began a research report for my great-grandmother, Nancy Jane Booth, (my mother's father's mother) I thought that I knew all about her from previous research. So I was shocked to see a Newspapers.com hint about a Sheriff's sale in Hugoton, Kansas. I knew that they had briefly lived there with their daughter's family, but had no clue they ever owned property there. The text isn't that interesting, but the details matter, so here is a transcription: (First published June 29, 1917) Notice of Sheriff's Sale Notice is hereby given, that in pursuance of an Order of Sale issued out of the District Court of Stevens County, Kansas, on the 13th day of June, 1917, an action wherein J.D. Newcomer Company, a corporation, is plaintiff, and Samuel McBee and Nancy McBee his wife, are defend...

Photo: Spider web with morning dew by  Ivicabrlic , courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The children's book Charlotte's Web came to mind this month, as more and more obituaries appeared in my hints, each adding to the web of information which solved mysteries, one tiny bit of information at a time. In that wonderful story, Charlotte has to work hard to create her web, even learning to read and spell in her effort to help the children save their pet pig.  Sometimes I see a family as a jigsaw puzzle , with really oddly shaped pieces, like a puzzle with a few missing bits. But  weaving a web better describes the work : find and snag the image of the obituary or news article, transcribe and link all the people named, then figure out who was NOT named and why. It's also interesting to see what facts are missing, such as previous marriages and divorce. The author of each obit worked as hard as a politician's speechwriter, stressing what they want remembered, while glossing over wh...

WTA volunteers building trail. Used with permission. While researching, all of us find people in records,  known and unknown, and would like to easily add them to our tree where we can find and add more records, properly place them in their family, and judge whether or not the family is properly placed.  This post will illustrate some ways to do that, using examples from my Ancestry.com online tree. Similar techniques can be used on other platforms.  Sometimes when you find a new person, it's quite easy to add each of the family members from a census record, even before the 1880, where relationships are not noted. When you experience that ease,  thank whoever blazed that path for you. In this post, I'll demonstrate how to mark the path yourself so that future  family researchers can more accurately add all the family members in a record. What Ancestry labels "Record" is actually a linked household index. An example is below. First, add your mystery person to yo...

Great Blue Heron in the Weeds at a lake in SE Kansas M. L. Haen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons I recently found a legal suit while researching more distant Booth relatives, where some members of the family were suing other relatives. A bit more work found that often the defendants were their own siblings! Transcribing the lists of names was both tedious and disturbing, while thinking what happened? Why were they doing this? While working through the first few transcription drafts, fixing spellings, adding in missing names, and double-checking numerous land descriptions, it reminded me of something similar found years ago. Fortunately there was an email about it to our Groups.io about that earlier case, with a transcription!  Re-reading it was good luck: this notice stated, " the object and general nature of which is to try and determine the ti tle to said land as between the parties, plaintiff and defendan t," whi...

Why, why, why, why? by  dullhunk:  CC BY 2.0 Celebrities are making the circuit of talk shows with books about "Finding My Why", defining purpose and motivation in their lives.  This is an approach to self-help for overcoming some negative aspects of one's life and adapting positive thinking and actions.  The common denominator in most of these books is asking the question, "Why?" As genealogists, we have frequently asked "Why?" in our research.  "Why did they move there ?  Why did they leave wherever  they left.  Why, Why, Why?  It is often one of the first questions we ask. It also one of the last questions we answer.  We get the answers to who, what, when and where through our research in BMD information and census records.  We trace the growth of families and their movement from place to place through newspapers and obituaries. Answering the why question isn't always so simple.  One reason is our lack of knowledge about the...

Used with permission from Steven Young Caudill, photographer Will Rogers is reported to have said , " If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging ." Recently I found myself in a hole of my own making, and took that advice. My first step was a new custom Tree Tag for my Ancestry.com tree: SameNameConfusion to make the profiles easy to find. Previously I wrote about pruning , part of which has been using Ancestry.com's ProTools to find possible duplicate profiles. I've merged hundreds of such profiles without problems. This case seemed simple and obvious on the surface because I saw what I expected to see, rather than what was actually there.  I saw Jane and Eliza J and thought they were the same woman I saw Thomas J Booth and Jefferson Booth, and thought that they were the same man Because both families were in the 1900 census, I did not stop to notice that one family was in Missouri and the other in Iowa  The Jane with no surname had little information, so I merged...

"Doubt" courtesy of Freepik.com Doubt: hidden superpower Doubt and uncertainty are no fun. Our brains prefer confidence. However, listening to doubt can be your superpower IF it helps you stop, evaluate the situation, then  consider alternatives .  As a beginner genealogy researcher, I was not only confident, but ignorant. We don't know what we don't know. I assumed memories of what I had been told about my family were accurate. I've since realized that while no one lied to me, my memories were incomplete and so were the memories of my family members. Unpleasant facts such as divorce and child deaths were never mentioned. No wonder it took me years to untangle even my own recent family, much less more distant relatives and ancestors. The idea of research planning seemed absurd to this beginner. Now I'm looking at doubt and skepticism in a new light as I clean up my sprawling tree. I caused much of the mess years ago by accepting whatever "facts" I f...

Chimney Rocks, Cherokee National Forest,  Del Rio, TN, courtesy of wikimediaCommons   A Double Paternity Mystery I never imagined when I submitted my DNA to Ancestry.com how much time I would subsequently spend helping long-lost cousins solve paternity mysteries. One of my closest matches was Ken, with whom I share 136 cM, but his tree did not appear to have any overlap with mine. I reached out, asking whether this was a mystery he was interested in solving. Ken put me in touch with his daughter Kim who was down for some detective work, and together we have spent months untangling the story of how our families are related.   The names of everyone except Kim and Ken have been changed due to the sensitive subject matter. Origin of the Mystery Ken's father was an airman stationed in Sacramento in 1960, who went home to east Tennessee and never returned to the girlfriend and infant son he left behind. Ken was raised by a stepfather he believed to be h...