Good Things Coming in Threes

 

What is that saying about good things coming in threes? This third month of 2026 may have been filled with lots of family history discoveries for the Firth and Rainey lines—as well as groan-worthy never-ending court case files—but that is not to say it's been the only genealogy work I've done this month. Behind the scenes, I've made some enjoyable connections with other researchers—oddly enough, in threes—collaborating on catching up with those elusive ancestors who've kept us chasing them, sometimes for decades.

For several months now, I had been noticing one researcher's name pop up, every time I pulled up another ancestor in my father's paternal line. It didn't take long to realize this woman is a thorough researcher who believes in locating records for even the hardest to find among our Polish ancestors. I decided to reach out to her, both on account of what I had noticed, and because I saw that she happened to be a DNA match of mine. We've struck up an ongoing conversation by email over the past half year, and I recently discovered our family's travel plans will soon take us to the very city where this DNA cousin lives. We are looking forward to actually meeting, face to face.

Another researcher I had been in touch with years ago has recently retired from a demanding career and is returning to family history puzzles with a vengeance. A few months ago, he reached out to let me know he is now back in the game and looking forward to collaborating on some challenging ancestors. He's got some fresh ideas about how to share the stories of our ancestors, which I think are spot on, and hope to collaborate with him as well.

Those two connections have been rewarding enough, but the third connection takes the cake. Once again, the credit starts with a DNA match, but this time it involves a close connection to an adoptee. While I want to respect this person's privacy by not sharing identifying information, our first contact was facilitated when this adoptee tentatively reached out to me. This message could not have been more circumspect for such an email. From that first contact to further email correspondence, and then phone calls, I was able to help this person connect with immediate family, as well as learn more about extended family. The conversations seemed eerily as if we had known each other for our entire lives, a most rewarding process to have become a part of.

These are apparently among some of the surprising turns of events that can happen when we learn more about our family history. Time consuming yet heart-warming, they remind me that genealogy is not only about dull, dry dates, places, and names, but about the real, live people whom those ancestors connected us to in the first place.

The Mess We're Left With

 

It's been a month filled with large court files regarding the intestate estates of Rainey men and their related families—not to mention name twins who couldn't possibly be father and son. In other words: following the line of Thomas Firth Rainey and his extended family has left me with more of a mess than when we started.

My goal for the third of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year was to find the identity of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents. That I did, and then some. The only problem was that this search has led me to more questions than answers.

I again reviewed those lengthy court cases, seeing if now, in retrospect, those many names mentioned in the files would make more sense. I've saved the links to specific letters in the estate files, entering them in the profile pages of each named ancestor or collateral relative. Yet only a few more details popped up.

For instance, I noticed that Isham Rainey's grandchildren from his daughter Sarah and her husband George Mealer were listed in two separate letters to the court where he died in Monroe County, Mississippi. Isham R. Mealer and his sister Martha together sent their letter regarding their grandfather's estate, identifying their residence as Murray County, Georgia. In that letter, tantalizingly, was a third grandchild mentioned: John Hammock. Do I have any idea which Rainey parent that third grandchild claims? Of course not. I can find absolutely no sign to connect him to his supposed grandfather, Isham Rainey.

Another letter to Monroe County, Mississippi, with the same purpose was signed by the remaining Mealer grandchildren of Isham Rainey. Why in a separate letter? Other than the fact that that letter was sent from the court in Oglethorpe County, I have no idea why the family was represented from two different Georgia counties.

As for the children of Isham Rainey's daughter Sarah, I can trace some of her descendants, but not all. This will need to wait for another year's examination. Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org has helped immensely to locate these big, messy court cases, but it hasn't found everything that I might need to answer the remaining questions. Nor have I been able to trace Sarah's sister Elizabeth, who in the same intestate case had represented herself as Elizabeth Arnold.

Repeating this same process next time for the children descended from Isham Rainey may reveal more court records—hopefully not of the intestate estate variety—but that effort will need far more time to complete than the brief day we have left to us in this month. It's time to pack away this month full of discoveries on both the Rainey and Firth families, be grateful for what can now be found much easier than in past years, and move on to April's focus from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

The Slow Trip Down the Path to the Past

 

The verdict is in: spending weeks reading legal documents can slow down one's research progress. At least in the case of my family history goal for this month, the numbers have not sported their usual robust appearance. The path to Thomas Firth Rainey's parents may have finally yielded some of its previously-hidden answers, but that path has also led through some messy probate files. I am far from gathering all the details needed to take the next step.

All told, I did add 104 names to my mother's side of the family tree, mostly by working my way through the lines of descent from the collateral lines associated with these Rainey and Firth ancestors, and by examining DNA matches who tie into those same ancestral families. Granted, that was not bad for two weeks' research efforts—but I have seen better results. Right now, that family tree has a total of 41,908 documented individuals gleaned after well over a decade's work.

On the other side of the family, my in-laws' tree has stayed frozen in position for most of the past six months, now at 41,793 individuals. However, in less than a week, we will shift our focus to my mother-in-law's side of the family and begin work on that tree for April's research goal—though again, we will be working on ancestors removed from our current times by well over a century.

In the last few days of this month, we'll need to wrap up what can be finished of the court records regarding Isham Rainey and George Mealer and see whether any further details will add to this tally. Then, it will be time to draw up a summary report of what's been accomplished and use that to create a to-do list for the next time I tackle the Rainey and Firth family lines back in the Virginia colony where they first were found before the close of the eighteenth century. 

Good Bedtime Reading for the Insomniac

 

One last time this month—at least for this puzzle regarding my fourth great-grandfather Isham Rainey—I've headed back to those DNA matches that Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool has hypothesized are my cousins from that same line. This means, too, that I'll need to revisit the probate records concerning the estate Isham left behind for his family to resolve.

Did I mention messy? As in perfect bedtime reading for the insomniac? 

As if sorting through the intestate Isham Rainey's belongings weren't sleep-inducing enough, there is the question of George Mealer. George, it appears from some records, was Isham's son-in-law, through marriage to his daughter Sarah Rainey. And yet, when I read through the 1845 court records in Monroe County, Mississippi, about the administration of Isham's estate there, the mention of someone named George Mealer pops up.

But wait! The George Mealer married to Isham's daughter was back in Georgia, where Isham himself once lived. In fact, it appeared that George Mealer died there, perhaps late in 1831—intestate, what else?—in Oglethorpe County, himself. So who was this other George Mealer? And were court listings of Mealer relatives reliable indicators of our Rainey kin? Or not?

Through the wearying catalog of legal documents contained in the two various cases, it was possible to glean a listing of the children of George Mealer, son-in-law of Isham Rainey—enough to launch me into a more recent time period where it might be possible to trace those Mealer children and their descendants through to a time period known for more well-documented records. That, in turn, may help determine how some mystery DNA cousins are related to me. All that stands between me and at least the discovery of one set of Isham Rainey's grandchildren is a huge stack of reading material in the form of mind-numbing legalese.

I'll let you know how it goes, tomorrow morning.

Overextending

 

Having hopes of discovering whatever became of the siblings of a fourth great-grandfather, even if his name was as unusual as Isham, may have been a bit overextending. There is, after all, only so much that can be found about an average resident of late 1700s Virginia.

There is, however, a number of loose ends to tie up regarding this Rainey family before the month comes to a close. Grateful to have achieved my goal of discovering not only my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey's parents, but grandparents as well, I'd like to see which of his siblings may have left a genealogical paper trail. After all, though Thomas' sisters had likely married in the early 1800s, they had at least made their appearance in court documentation owing to the fact that their father had died intestate. This is a record source that could be useful to revisit.

At the time of Isham Rainey's 1843 death in Mississippi, both his daughters had spoken up to make sure they were included in the distributions of their father's estate, should there have been a residue. One daughter, Sarah, had married someone in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, by the name of George Mealer. The other daughter, Elizabeth, had identified herself in letters to the probate court in Mississippi as Elizabeth Arnold.

Returning to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, it may be possible to discover more about the family of George and Sarah Mealer. From that point, if any other indicators surface, we may also be able to wrap up this month's research project with information on the identity of Sarah's sister Elizabeth Arnold and her unnamed husband.

The end game here will be to identify whether either sister had children for one purpose: to locate any DNA matches for these lines that might have been descendants of this Rainey line.

Vanishing Into the Gap

 

As exciting as it was yesterday to find mention of the paternal grandfather of my brick wall third great grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey, it barely took one more day for me to realize that finding anything more on this Rainey family may take far longer than just another evening's research. Wills may be the go-to resource for discovering more about our distant ancestors from the 1700s, but it takes a couple more generations before widespread documentation can carry us through the ages. What's happened with that Rainey family line—poof! In just a moment—is that it has vanished into the document gap between the earliest years of our nation and the 1850 census.

So far this month, we've discovered that Thomas Firth Rainey, my third great-grandfather, was son of Isham Rainey. Isham, in turn, was son of William Rainey of Brunswick County, Virginia. Finding William Rainey's 1812 will yesterday opened up new research possibilities for me by revealing the names of Isham's siblings: Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, William, Jesse, Herbert, and Zebulon.

Now that I've found those names, you know I've begun the search for those collateral lines of descent. After all, I have potential DNA cousins to place in the right family group. But do you think I've found any actual documentation for these siblings? Sadly, no—with the exception of some marriage records from the 1790s. Other than that, it seems like the entire family, other than Isham, has disappeared.

The problem that has presented itself at this point in the research is two-fold. On the one hand, there are researchers out there who have been puzzling over this family for decades. They have not been shy about sharing their speculations. And others have been more than willing to help themselves to those theories by pasting them into their public family trees, despite lack of documentation.

On the other hand, there is that gap I mentioned. Unless I can find where the (possibly) wandering Rainey descendants moved, I can't with certainty say I've found a will for any of the brothers. If any of those siblings died before the advent of the 1850 census with its listing of every resident in a household, I'll have no way to know that those are the right descendants for my Rainey line. It's that gap between the early 1800s and the 1850 census which has suddenly brought me to a standstill.

There is, however, one encouraging sign. In William Rainey's 1812 will, he mentioned several grandchildren, providing us a token sign that there were indeed marriages and families continuing the Rainey legacy. But other than one specific grandson, there is no mention of names for any of the others among his grandchildren. 

One, however, is better than none, so it will be worth our while to learn a bit about Benjamin L. Rainey to see if information gleaned there can lead us to any others in the extended Rainey family.   

Back to the Beginning

 

Sometimes, genealogy research seems to gain lightning speed, even after having been stymied for months, even years. That's what happened this month, with the discovery not only of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents, but then the revelation of his maternal grandparents and their children. Then, progress can just as quickly turn in the other direction, and that is where I'm stuck right now, unable to push back through that maternal Firth generation any farther.

Since I'm stuck on that detour to what was once the research path of least resistance, it may be a good time to turn back to the beginning of this month's research goal. After all, the goal for my Twelve Most Wanted for March was to find the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey. What about pushing further back on his paternal side?

We've already discovered that Thomas' father gifted us with an unusual given name, Isham. Also knowing that the Rainey and Firth families originated in Brunswick County, Virginia, I decided to see whether Isham himself might have been mentioned in the will of any other Raineys in Brunswick County.

Once again, FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search came to the rescue. There in Brunswick County, the will book contained a document signed by one William Rainey on September 30, 1812. In his testament, which was presented in court on April 24, 1815, William Rainey named his wife Mary, along with his daughter, also named Mary; another daughter, Martha; a married daughter, Elizabeth Edmunds; his sons William, Jesse, Herbert, Zebulon, and, of course, Isham. In addition, the will acknowledged several grandchildren.

If we've gone back to the point at which we started this month, we now have plenty to work with in also pushing Thomas Firth Rainey's paternal line back two more generations. Not bad for one month's exploration.