The Long Slide Down to the Present

  

After wills and deeds and, yes, even squabbles among family members aired in the district court room, I've amassed enough names to begin the next formidable step. From that lofty perch atop the pedigree chart of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, I envision my next task to be tracing a long slide down the lines of descent to our present time.

I've already begun the process with some of the names recently discovered—or, to put it more accurately, those names more recently amended, based on convincing arguments. I have a patterned way to navigate those lines of descent: from one Carter child, I then document the marriage, then find listings of that couple's children. Beginning with the oldest child of that couple, I then chart that child's eventual marriage and children, then do the same for the next generation in that line, then the next generation, until I've reached the present time.

Once I've taken that long slide down to the present—or for as far as I can keep going—I rewind the process for the second-born child, then third. Eventually, all lines of descent for all John Carter's children will be documented in like manner in my family tree—at least those for whom documentation is available.

As we have already seen in this case of John Carter's family, some of those early discoveries were buried in court records for extended family members, whether parents of in-laws, or half siblings, or others who felt they righteously had a slight which only the court system could right.

Sometimes, this process simply can go no farther than court records can guide us. That realization may seem discouraging, considering the war-torn history of Virginia, home to this Carter family for generations, but I'm actually looking forward to checking the numbers when I do my biweekly count this weekend. I think seeing the numbers will be encouraging.

Then, too, the estimate via ThruLines calculations of my DNA matches linked to this Carter line will undoubtedly change as I add more names to this line of descent on my tree at Ancestry.com. After all, ThruLines is not only based on DNA results, but is partially guided by other subscribers' information on their tree. But in which way, I'm not yet sure.

Keep in mind: mistaken input, mistaken output. And yet, with so many people opting to use the old Carter genealogy book compiled by Joseph Lyon Miller in 1912 to build their tree—declaring Elizabeth Armistead, but not Sarah Kenyon, as wife of John Carter—I may actually see my number of Carter ThruLines matches drop. (I revised my tree to follow the argument in the George Harrison Sanford King paper which supports that Sarah Kenyon was mother of at least John Carter's first four children.) With all these adjustments and additions, both my biweekly count and the ThruLines count will be something to watch as we close in on the end of this month's research goals.