Ancestor #3: If There's a Will

 

Genealogy lecturers who delight in crafting the clever presentation title might have found it irresistible to repurpose that old saying, "Where there's a will, there's a way," but I find it far more useful to grab the retake that FamilySearch launched this past year: their Full Text Search capability. With a few well-chosen search terms, including the name of a brick wall ancestor, this tool—if any can do it at all—can spot the name of a brick-wall ancestor among the legatees in the will of an as yet unknown parent.

At least, that's what I'm hoping as I pursue the third of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. 

That third research goal involves the early life of my second great-grandfather William Alexander Boothe. Supposedly born in 1812 in a now-nonexistent Virginia county—Nansemond—this ancestor married, had two sons, then lost his wife. According to family stories, he also lost his property and headed to Tennessee with those two motherless sons in tow. From that point, he married my second great-grandmother Rachel Teresa Riley—another relative whose name is in dispute—and fathered eleven more children, including my direct line Martha Cassandra Boothe.

William Alexander Boothe's existence is clearly documented from the point of his arrival in Tennessee, but finding him in those earlier records in Virginia has been a quest which eludes me. Granted, it's been a while since I wrestled with that research question—William Alexander Boothe was my first choice for Twelve Most Wanted in the year I started this project, January of 2020—but I really haven't made much headway.

It's time for me to find the rest of the story about Will's parents and potential siblings. After all, I have twenty six DNA matches to my test results at Ancestry, according to their ThruLines tool. If I push back another generation to the ThruLines suggested parents, I pick up an additional five possible DNA cousins. Granted, those are modest numbers—not like what I stand to gain by solving the research question for yesterday's selected ancestor—but its the thrill of the chase which keeps me and some of my DNA cousins on William Boothe's trail. With the latest tools added to the research arsenal, March may well be my month to find that answer.