Research Synergy: Where Collaboration is Key

 

When it comes to researching distant ancestors with umpteen children, grandchildren, and beyond through five generations, it takes a team of researchers to keep it all straight. That's why I'm an advocate of reaching out and connecting with other researchers tracing the same family lines. Whether that means a teamwork approach—you tackle this child's line of descent; I'll take that second-born child—or sharing in the mad scramble to analyze documents found, having someone else to bounce ideas off of can not only make a difference, but add a bonus of a shared victory dance at the end of the line.

So it's been with the discovery of a fellow genealogy blogger, Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who had made similar discoveries two years ago about a wife of John Carter—Sarah Kenyon—not mentioned in published genealogies. It was two years ago when Patrick posted about several court records from which can be gleaned information to partially reconstruct family relationships between the Carter half-siblings. We have since been sharing information and observations about what we are finding. And we both have discussed how the use of mitochondrial DNA testing may sort out the centuries-old mysteries of John Carter's wives.

Patrick is currently tracing the line of John Carter's daughter Frances through her marriage to Rice Curtis, their children and grandchildren, as revealed in—what else?—court documents. He's sharing what he is finding in his own blog, sorting it out from Frances Carter Curtis' own will, detailing her family's relocation from her childhood home in Virginia to Davidson County, Tennessee, where the will was filed. 

While I've been spending my weekdays scouring court documents regarding my fifth great-grandfather John Carter this month, behind the scenes I'm still catching up on the unsolved mysteries of last winter, when I wrestled with my father's Polish ancestors. On that line, too, I have met up with a distant cousin—coincidentally a DNA match—who is also researching that particular family. That is a good thing, for there are many descendants yet to find, including missing ones in Poland whose disappearing trail may actually have wandered across an ocean to America. Sometimes it's hard to reconnect the two parts of one person's life trajectory when it involves migration across an ocean.

Two sets of eyes are better than one when it comes to spotting details, or unearthing a record that hadn't been considered before. Even more comes into play when those two sets of eyes can claim two different sets of DNA matches, and can compare and contrast the lines of their respective DNA cousins. When one team member doesn't have key matches, but the other one does, that fuels research synergy.