How They Connected

Finding that little McLeran detail tucked away in the digitized probate files of Suwannee County helped push me one step closer to uncovering the connection between the McLeran line and my Tison family. True, in a small town, it should come as no surprise that families have intermarried, but I was frustrated to not be able to find the explanation for how the two families did, indeed, relate.

Mary McLeran' note in her husband's file moved me beyond that mystery. Now I knew his name: William T. McLeran. And since he died intestate and the court had named both Mary, his wife, and Jesse, his brother, as administrators of the estate, it was fairly easy, from that point on, to piece together that McLeran family tree.

The litany goes something like this: Jesse and William were sons of Nevin McLeran of North Carolina who died in nearby Columbia County, Florida, in 1852. Nevin McLeran's wife was Rebecca Tison, who died only a few years after he did, in the same Florida County.

Granted, I have yet to find out just who Rebecca's parents were. That, most likely, will take more of that slow and tedious exercise of reading through probate files—if, indeed, there are any digitized copies made available online, as I'm still hampered by geographic location from just stopping in at the local courthouse. But it does illustrate one reality about doing family history research: you do it one step at a time. Each step reveals just enough of a clue to advance your progress one move closer to the next question.

And so we proceed from there. Next quest: to find Rebecca McLeran's connection to the Tison family. My hunch is that it will be somehow connected to my Tison ancestor in the same county, George Edmund McClellan's first wife, Sidnah Tison. It's just a matter of determining how close a connection that will be.