Jumping Tracks

 

When it feels like I'm pounding my head against the same brick wall over and over again, it helps to just jump tracks for a while. It's time to try another approach to the question of Job Tison's origin.

One approach may be to check the DNA matches who have descended from this same Tison family. There are plenty of them to examine. Just at Ancestry.com's ThruLines listing, there are thirty four DNA matches to consider, both for my fourth great-grandfather Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. 

If that isn't enough, I could combine approaches—the ThruLines DNA approach along with the F.A.N. Club concept—by jumping back one more generation through Job's father-in-law, West Sheffield, to see whether any of Job's Sheffield in-laws followed him to Georgia.

Even that approach, however, will take time. It requires examination of the lines of descent, checking carefully and corroborating with documentation, since not all generational outlines at ThruLines have been fully vetted. They basically provide a popular vote of who everyone thinks the greats- and great-greats might have been.

Having started with Job Tison's eldest son, Aaron, I've already begun the long slide down to the present, building my family tree out, document by document, to confirm the closest of my Tison DNA matches from his line. For my first Tison DNA match, that route led me, predictably, to a fifth cousin. With that encouraging start, I'll be spending more time behind the scenes, rehearsing the generations descending, first from Aaron, then moving to Job's other children's lines, one by one. Besides my own direct line through Sidney Tison McClellan, I have DNA matches from the line of Job's daughter Melinda, and Job's son John Mason Berrien Tison.

This should keep me busy for quite some time. Hopefully, one of these lines may provide a clue linking the family back to Job's siblings, maybe even parents, from his birthplace, whether it was in North Carolina or elsewhere.