MaryLynn recently wrote about piecing together snippets of information ; I came across some more recent history recently. By chance Ancestry.com landed me on the profile of my uncle Hollis McBee, and I noticed a couple of new newspaper article hints, which can be a rich source of information.  Calgary Herald, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Thursday 8 November 1945, page 8, column 3, news article "Trucks Damaged, Drivers Unhurt"  mentioning Hollis McBee; Newspapers.com : accessed 11December 2025.      At first  glance, the story reveals few facts, besides that Hollis was unhurt.  But it shows me what he was doing in 1945; which  was driving truck in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada, and that he had been in an accident.  The second article places him and his first family in Great Falls, Montana, 375 miles south:   Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, Montana, Friday 31 October 1958, page 11, columns 4-5, "Nine Marriages Dissolved"  incl...

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® ...