Never Really Have to Say it's Over

 

When it comes to summer, thinking it's over after passing Labor Day is so old school. Summer apparently can begin or end when the local governing body proclaims it so. Actually, if I were still a student, I'd feel robbed of my vacation if I attended class in a school district discarding that post-Labor Day tradition; one school district near me cuts summer vacation short by a full month.

The opposite is true, as well, thankfully—at least for those not bound by school schedules. Those of us who are able to travel (and include family research in our wandering ways) find the opportunity to stretch "summer vacation" into those fall months quite refreshing—and sometimes even quite a bargain.

Lately, I've been hearing the news about fellow genealogical society members returning from research trips. One member and her (now-adult) daughter just traced the memory lane winding through all the old hometowns of her Oklahoma ancestors before their emigration to California. A former student from one of my genealogy classes came up to chat after a meeting. She was so energized when she told me about all the material she gleaned while visiting several cousins back in Louisiana. Her next task: write it all down so the next generation will know these details, too.

Others I know are planning their research trips for later this month or even in October. Some local groups are organizing trips to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. One of our board members recently discovered some new details on an ancestor in Tennessee, and is making plans to travel there next month for research.

While in the past, we might have reserved our research trips for those "official" months of summer vacation—all the better for drafting "research assistants" on those family trip detours to libraries or cemeteries—now, the end of summer hardly stops us. When it comes to summer, we never really have to say it's over. As it turns out for so many of us, any time is good for a family history research trip.

Peeking Past the Pandemic

 

I know, I know: the coast has been clear for quite some time now. But I live among the cautious ones.

Our genealogical society had only last month hosted our first hybrid meeting, hauling out all the "broadcasting" equipment so as to not leave our newly-acquired out-of-state members out in the dark. For the coming months, we'll be doing a hybrid of hybrids, mixing in-person daytime meetings with online-only evening events. That gives us the advantage of gleaning some great speakers from around the country for those online-only events.

This week, for instance, we were privileged to host "The Archive Lady," Melissa Barker, from Tennessee, thanks to the same technology that enabled us to conduct meetings throughout the entire pandemic. For a society based in California, that's not something we could have done quite as easily, before Covid-19 changed life for everyone.

Still, face to face is vital for the ongoing vitality of an organization. We need to see each other's faces. In person. While it is understandable that, despite prudent health precautions, some society members hesitate to congregate, for those of us who can, we are tentatively stepping out into the post-pandemic air. Think summertime coffee meetings al fresco. Lunch gatherings. Field trips.

Yesterday, I met with one society member to discuss DNA research, and to put our heads together for some research problem-solving. It was good to get together again. As often happens in social settings, our conversation wandered, evolving from DNA to the archives presentation from the other night's meeting, to a wistful yearning to get back to "genealogy vacations" where we combine travel and research.

Since several members of our local society claim roots in Tennessee, perhaps our Tennessee archivist speaker has inspired us. A group field trip to research at the archives mentioned during our meeting might be a big undertaking for such a small group. On the other hand, why not plans something like that?

In one way, the pandemic may have caused us to be more cautious, and thus more short-sighted. True, there are still many lingering threats to consider. But for those who can get out, we need to grab those opportunities. Plan with prudence.

If we don't make that plan, the dream will never become reality—whether it is a group trip to research at our own state's archives, or a grand adventure to explore the roots of our relatives who lived farther away. I'm ready to take off those pandemic blinders and peer into some future possibilities, whether it is encouraging more face-to-face interaction here at home with fellow family historians, or reaching out to take our genealogy research on the road.

From Relatives at RootsTech to Relatives Face to Face

 

It was the beginning of March and, as soon as I could, I opened my RootsTech account, even before the first session had started. Why? I was curious about my results from Relatives at RootsTech.

Even though I know the app bases its connections on the universal family tree at FamilySearch.org—and I could already spot mistakes in my own part of the family lines there—I was curious to see what the program would find. I am, after all, consummately curious about all my distant cousins, wherever they are.

Like anyone else, I was hoping for those elusive cousins to materialize—you know, the ones who hold all the intel on what became of that disappearing great-great-whatever-grandparent that nobody can trace on paper. In my case, I was hoping for a Polish connection to my mystery grandfather, known here in the states by the sanitized American version, John T. McCann. Yeah, right: Polish.

Instead, one of relatives rising to the top of my Relatives at RootsTech list was a fourth cousin once removed. Looking at the readout comparing our two family lines, I could see she was descended from my third great-grandfather George E. McClellan's oldest daughter. Looking at my own family tree, with its multiple collateral lines extended all the way down to present-day descendants, I realized I had this relative's mother in my tree.

Both of us must have simultaneously realized this, and rushed to send each other messages. She messaged me on the FamilySearch system, while I, realizing she is also on my DNA match list, sent her a note via Ancestry. Each of us independently realized the other had used a different messaging system, and responded there. After this comedy of communication errors, we ditched both systems and opted for the straightforward connection of email.

That turned out to be a good thing. After all, we may end up being the first of this year's new cousin discoveries through Relatives at RootsTech to become Relatives face-to-face. And we couldn't have planned this any better than it "accidentally" turned out to be.

You see, I'm not on the opposite side of the continent right now—you know, that home from which I always moan, "oh, if I were back east, I could look up that record in person." I had already planned to accompany my husband on a business trip to Florida. While there, we also planned on meeting up with family members in the area, including a special trip returning to Wellborn, the Florida home of my third great-grandfather, George E. McClellan.

It just so happens that my newfound Relatives at RootsTech cousin lives a ten minute drive from Wellborn, and goes there often to keep up the McClellan cemetery, once part of the McClellan property there. She offered: "I'll be happy to meet up with you there."

If all goes well with travel plans, and a thousand different variables all fall into place for five relatives' separate itineraries, that is exactly what we'll be doing...today.

Glad I'm Not a Time Traveler

 

It's been a busy season for me, coming out of pandemic isolation and back into the always-rush-hour world of inter-connectedness. In just one season, my family has flown cross-country to Florida on business, then to Connecticut for training, then driven to San Diego for yet another company event. Before the month is out, we will complete one more masked venture on a five hour flight across the ocean. Even I can't keep up with myself. Despite the theoretical perks for family historians, it makes me glad I don't have the capability to be a time traveler.

Having a perpetual motion schedule has its down side, as you can imagine. The theoretical approach of completing work ahead of time to make space for down time on trips is near laughable. I think working ahead only doubles the "fun" by dooming such a poor soul to have to repeat the effort upon return home; there is always something more to complete in the after-thought. I find myself reviewing tasks and realizing how much got neglected, despite the twice-over built into the travel system. Perhaps there is something to be said for the value of peaceful contemplation in unhurried pandemic conditions.

That said, what prompted me to consider how klutzy a time traveler I'd be was the moment of stumbling upon readers' kind comments from the past month, and realizing I hadn't responded. One comment in particular touched on how to choose research projects. While I can't lay out a rigid how-to procedure in response, I do have some suggestions based on my own experience, and will spend some time at the end of this month to discuss how I go about planning future research.

The year ahead certainly promises to be different than either the nearly two-year-long pandemic season we've just passed or life-as-we-knew-it before words like coronavirus became part of our everyday lexicon. Yes, there may be variants on the horizon, or another surge, but people are making plans to travel—or actually going out there and doing it now. Some folks will be packing their bags for that annual trip to the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in January—sadly, I will not be among them next year—or maybe even venturing out to Sacramento, California, for the National Genealogical Society's annual conference this coming May. There will be trips to courthouses to retrieve records, or pilgrimages to clean ancestors' headstones. Maybe people will be brave enough to gather together in family reunions once again.

It will be good to see familiar faces back in the same comfortable places where we once enjoyed gathering—or in places new to us with future friends and associates in upcoming learning experiences. No matter which trip it is that becomes my preferred way to disrupt my everyday schedule, I'll be glad it involves only the here and now and not the wide-open world of time travel. I'll leave those scenarios to the imagination of science fiction right now. No falling into the plagues, leprosy, or consumption from ages past for this uncoordinated traveler; masking up for the coronavirus is challenge enough for me.

 

Planning . . . Or is it Dreaming?

 

What is it about this pandemic season that makes us feel as if we'll never travel again? I already know that isn't true. My husband is planning a business trip to Oklahoma, and my daughter has already made it to Hawaii. Even I, without the shield of a vaccine on board, managed to survive a couple emergency get-out-of-town trips this year.

But when it comes to a research journey to benefit those never-ending questions about our family history, that sort of travel seems out of sight. Yes, I know I can request that copies of records can be mailed to me. But it is not the same thing as going there myself. The thrill of the "hunt" is still a motivation.

Thus, here I sit, trying to gather my thoughts and determine what I would hunt for, if I had the opportunity to head back east to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. There have certainly been astute observations made by helpful readers—and I intend to follow up on these. But I can't seem to envision the opportunity to actually go there and get to work on any research plans.

Do you ever reach that stage of research malaise? Perhaps it is just an artifact of can't-do-that limits. Or maybe that, combined with ancestor exhaustion. I have, after all, worn myself to a frazzle, trying to invent ways around my research roadblock. I've tackled Mary Carroll Gordon's ancestry before, after all. This is not the first time I've tangled with this dead end.

I realize there is a camp within the family history milieu which believes in setting a research goal and sticking with it. Not so, for me. I sometime reach a point when I feel that I can forgive myself for laying aside an invincible research question.

There are many reasons why I give myself that permission. Every year, for instance, more and more records become digitized and available to view online. In addition, my travel plans can change—or at least they had in the past, when opportunities opened up to visit a new-to-me part of the country. I am, after all, amassing quite a collection of reasons to stop by that particular corner of the country, and once things open up, I just may be able to do so.

With all that in mind, I don't struggle too much with setting aside an unanswered research question at the end of its designated time. There will be another season to revisit Mary Carroll's story. Maybe next time, it will be in person, not within the limits of cyber-space.

If the struggle to find documentation regarding the connection between Mary Carroll and her parents—whether Anthony Carroll and his first wife or some other couple—was not a successful one this month, don't worry about setting that project aside for now. For next month, we've got another research question which has proven just as much a challenge as Mary's story. For that one, I've already wrestled with it before, so we may as well get an early jump on May's research goal.

With that, we'll begin laying down the preliminary groundwork for another of my mother-in-law's research challenges a few days early. Tomorrow, we'll meet Ancestor Number Five on my Twelve Most Wanted for 2021: Sarah Howard Ijams.

One Small Problem . . .

 

After all the effort, over this past month, to confirm the father of Mary Carroll Gordon, my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, I'm still left with one nagging thought. It may turn out to be a matter of one small problem, but it is a sticking point, nonetheless: why would a woman who had been dead for over a decade be named as an heir in her father's will?

If that father was indeed the Anthony Carroll of Monongalia County whom we've been studying this past month, he certainly did name someone in his will whom we can presume was our Mary—well, if we assume that the "Polly Gorden" in Anthony's will was nickname for Mary, that is. And I count it as an assuring sign that a hundred year old history book in nearby Preston County, West Virginia, explained that Anthony Carroll was married four times, including to the woman who was listed as mother of a daughter the couple named Mary.

On the bright side, that book—A History of Preston County, West Virginia—also mentioned that Mary Carroll, daughter of Anthony, married a local man by the name of William Gordon, which she did before the couple left Monongalia County for nearby Greene County, Pennsylvania. Another positive indicator was that William and Mary named one of their sons Anthony, presumably after her own father.

However, depending on which account we follow—either the Howard Leckey book, The Tenmile Country and its Pioneer Families, or the headstone pictured at Mary's Find A Grave memorial—Mary died in either 1814 or 1812. Anthony—if he was her father—died in 1830. He drew up his will at the end of the previous August. Surely by that time, he would have gotten word of his daughter's death, wouldn't he?

Knowing how many errors I've been able to spot in the various local history books which were the offerings of a nostalgic previous century, that one thought keeps nagging at me. What if "Polly Gorden" was an entirely different person? Why aren't there other tokens of our Mary's connection to the Carroll family?

I'm beginning to draw up a mental list of documents to look up, once we are all able to get back to traveling and researching family history in person. I may as well commit that list to paper—or at least file it virtually as a future to-do list. I can't quite yet hit the road to visit any repositories in Monongalia County, or even in southwest Pennsylvania, but it wouldn't hurt to prepare for the eventuality that someday, we will be back to researching family history on site where that family once lived. 

Muscle Memory and the Paper Chase

I've often wondered why, when I first began my personal genealogical research, I could remember every twist and turn in the unfolding branches of that growing family tree, but now—several years later—I can't seem to recall even a small portion of the names in that collection. I tell myself to consider the immensity of such a demand; after all, I now have upwards of twenty thousand individuals in each of my own and my husband's family trees. However, something recently occurred which convinced me there may be another reason for that brain fade phenomenon.

I've lately been called back to the early pages of the pedigree chart for the Kelly branch of my father-in-law's heritage. Duplicating the work I put into building that family tree so long ago is not wasted effort, though. While for DNA-matching purposes I need to transfer records from my father-in-law's pedigree to a new, repurposed tree for my husband's entire family, I am discovering new details and documents that need to be added to the family's records. Think of this paper chase as a self-designed genealogy do-over.

As I've been moving, person by person, through those Kelly ancestors and their kin, I've noticed something I attribute to muscle memory. It's not unlike the kind of experience people feel when picking up a hobby they haven't tried in a long time. Like the oft-repeated saying about learning how to ride a bike, revisiting certain activities after a long absence seems to erase the gap of inactivity between first doing a repetitive task and resuming the practice.

Can researching one's ancestors create the same kind of muscle memory as, say, learning how to juggle—or ride a bike, even? After all, muscle memory is formed in doing everyday activities which improve with practice and eventually become automatic.

I am beginning to wonder if that is so. In the case of my paper chase to find the documents on my father-in-law's Kelly ancestors, I originally started the search in Fort Wayne, city of the family's newly-immigrant status in 1870. I mulled over burial records, cranked through microfilm of church records, wandered through cemeteries to photograph headstones, and drove through town to see the location of each of the family's residences over the decades.

In other words, by the time I finished researching the Kelly family, I knew their presence in Fort Wayne. I had been there. Read the newspaper articles. Walked the streets where their hundred year old houses once stood. I did it all in person. Their life details became a part of me by shadowing their footsteps.

It's been a long time since I revisited some of that research work. But once I re-checked each element this past week to see whether any details needed to be updated, the act of simply reviewing these records brought back a strange flood of memory. Not quite déjà vu, but close enough to feel as if I were walking those pathways again.

There is something we are missing by relying solely upon digitized record collections to assemble the record of our ancestry. In the ease of searching online from our own comfortable homes, we surely can access more records in less time than any genealogists of prior ages ever were able to secure. We are in an unparalleled golden age of research. And yet, we are missing something: the fruit of our hands-on efforts to trace our heritage.

Muscle memory, of course, is a misnomer. It is not just muscles which "remember" the activities we learn to do. A fascinating article which provides a brief overview of observations on brain function during and after learning new motor-skill tasks emphasizes that muscle memory is a very different sort of memory than, say, memorizing facts. Our brain works differently when it is learning by doing.

When our family walked the streets of Fort Wayne in search of our history, we were not just gathering facts to memorize. The learning we were getting was learning by doing. We didn't just learn that young mother Catherine Kelly Stevens died an untimely death in 1884; we found her headstone placed, not in a grave designated for the Stevens family, but in the family plot of her father's family—revealing the suddenness of the tragedy which befell a young father unprepared for such a turn of events. We saw the grayness of the simple cabins where the extended family lived, so close to the railroad tracks which provided their lifelong livelihood—and, in some cases, the source of their untimely deaths.

That is the muscle memory way to learn family history. When you can go and do the research in person, you come away with a very different type of life story than you can in a computer-assisted document search. Sure, you can use the one to assist you in completing the other, but one without the other yields, in my estimation, an incomplete picture. Just going back to review the documents I gleaned from those visits evokes the experience for me all over again. There is no doubt that is the reason I can so strongly recall details about the families for whom I completed those hands-on research investigations at the beginning. They are not just facts in my head; they were life stories whose very trail I traced with my own eyes, hands and feet.

I heartily urge researchers to not stop short, having found a way to digitally construct that paper trail of your ancestors. Don't be satisfied with merely cataloging names, dates, and places. Go walk the paths your ancestors once walked. Feel what it is like to have been there. When your great-greats get into your muscle memory, their memory will live on in an entirely different way than it could when the only token of their existence was merely a name typed on a piece of paper. 

Getting to Know the State of my Roots

Yesterday was a different day for this family history hound: we set aside the questions and the conversations we'd been following, and just took a drive through the countryside. I may have roots that reach back deeply into Florida's history, but I really don't know the state up close—at least, not personally. I know family stories, but not the places which inspired those stories.

Florida as a state has a very different look than the state in which I grew up (New York), and certainly is much different than the state where I've lived for most of my life since college (California). Remember, I've only set foot in this state for the first time just a few years ago. And it's not yet a familiar sight to me.

So yesterday, we went driving. And discovered that Florida is a state where "you can't get there from here"—at least, that seems to be the case as far as the interstate highways are concerned, particularly if you are traveling from one small town to another.

I don't know what I was expecting, but knowing that Florida has long been a haven for retirees from the colder northern reaches of the east coast, I had imagined the state would take on the more metropolitan ambience of its transplanted residents. That, as it turns out, is not so. Not, at least, for the rest of the state outside the real estate of the largest and most well-known Florida cities.

To get to our destination yesterday, we stayed on roads which, though numbered as state highways, consisted merely of one lane in each direction. Get stuck behind a truck hauling gravel, and that's where you'll be for the next thirty miles—unless you have a route which requires turning off onto another highway of equal capacity...with another gravel truck backing up traffic.

Other than that, we drove through countryside which could have looked this same way fifty or one hundred years ago. I could let my imagination run with thoughts of what life might have been like for my great-great grandparents with such bucolic scenery. It was that easy.

While I accomplished no great revelations to push back the family tree even one more generation, it helps to be able to gain a sense of place concerning one's ancestors—especially if those ancestors claimed occupations which tied them to the land in one way or another. Those tall, thin pines from which my ancestors likely produced turpentine? I saw plenty of those. Likewise, orange groves, part of another branch of my maternal line.

Though I had a dentist and mayor as one of my ancestors in Florida, even those "professionals" had property which produced an income for them through agriculture. And the land we drove through represented the types of soil and topography my ancestors would have not only found to be familiar, but would have cast a keen analytical eye on, in passing through on their route. The soil of the place held a far more important place in the life of our ancestors, something I needed to remember during this "down" time on my research trip.

Perhaps "getting to know our roots" may represent more than one way of looking at things. Those roots, after all, thrived based on the soil in which they were grown. We can learn a lot about our people by taking a closer look at where they were planted. We may be far removed from that turf now, but we still owe a lot more to those roots than we think.

Another Kind of Family "Interview"

It isn't often that we, as our family's historian, actually get to meet up with someone who will show even a modicum of interest—instead of MEGO—in her own family, but in the case of this week's visits, I do have a chance to share with yet a few more relatives. I've mentioned researching my paternal line with one cousin and my maternal grandmother's line with another cousin, but how could I forget to prepare for yet another part of the family? And yet, that is what I didn't think of until my sister-in-law mentioned that very detail to my husband.

The request: show that family tree in diagram form. Simple. Visual. Helpful for instantaneous comprehension. And something I hadn't thought of. I guess I just carry that stuff around in my head. Besides, one click of a mouse and I can pull it up on my computer, any time. But this week, we might just do a family project of printing a huge copy of what we've got, so far. Maybe that will help track progress a bit better, especially for those DNA matches which are showing up on all branches of the family.

I've sat down, during past family visits, and shown my sisters-in-law their family tree as it appears on my Ancestry.com account. I've sent out links to them, so that they, as guests, can view the tree online for themselves. But there's just something gratifying about being able to get your hands on something. It somehow helps you wrap your brain around the too-much-data feeling. So this week, we'll try printing various takes on the family trees.

In this case, that will not only mean the Irish Stevens and Tully trees of my father-in-law, but the colonial trees of the Gordon lines, as well as the Flowers and Metzger trees of my mother-in-law. There are so many permutations to explore.

Speaking of Gordons, of course, reminds me that my recent find of the used book on the Tenmile Country might better have been a book brought with me than the brick-left-behind. It is really a heavy thing, and I opted to not bring it—and yet, there is something decidedly thrilling about seeing your own family's names in print in a real book that I could have shared. Yep, I should have thought to bring it, despite its tome quality. Choosing actions based on the assumption that no one will be interested always turns out to be a poor option. Better to be prepared for when the opportunity springs itself upon us.

Needless to say, in the meantime, I've been doing some housekeeping on those lines in my mother-in-law's tree in preparation for our family visits later this week. With so many of my family's relatives moving to Florida, this yearly visit eastward is turning into quite the marathon.

Overlapping Timelines

By the time you read this, I will hopefully be winging my way eastward on a research trip to Florida. Unlike last week's trip—when research meant pulling old books from stack after stack of genealogical resources at Salt Lake City's Family History Library—this type of research trip involves face to face meetings with relatives I already know. Questions are much different here, too: instead of asking myself just what kind of document I can locate to prove that my fourth great-grandfather Peleg Tilson was actually born—to parents from Massachusetts, no less—on the forbidden back end of colonial southwest Virginia, I will now be asking living people for their own recollections of family members they knew.

While my approach in discussing my mystery grandfather's line with my paternal cousin will take the approach of recalling specific names, with my maternal cousin, I'll stick to what I call overlapping timelines. Because my McClellan great-grandfather was one of at least nine siblings, that means quite a few second cousins might be among those names that ring a bell with the maternal cousin I'll be visiting next week. To zero in on the right names to mention, I'll be sketching out the timelines of all these overlapping cousins and second cousins. After all, not all will be in my focus for this experiment. Some of my great-grandfather's cousins died young, or never married, or never made it beyond childhood. Ditto for the subsequent generation. The ones which will fall into my cousin's memory will be those whose life trajectory crossed hers, if even for only a brief moment during her own childhood.

Then again, I need to remember that this is the family with stories. Aunt Fannie's heritage still lives, and this cousin I'll be meeting is a wealth of such memories. My visit with her will be spent with pen and notebook close at hand. There is so much to be remembered.

Thankfully, a cross-continental flight gives ample time for me to get those last-minute thoughts together, so I'll have plenty of time to line up all those cousinly timelines before we meet for lunch on Monday. As usual, it will be a time to look forward to. You never know when one surprise story will lead to new discoveries. Genealogy, after all, is a chain reaction just waiting to be touched off by the tiniest clue.

Family Quiz

So it's time to think of all the things I'd like to ask the elder members of my family—at least, for the ones who are still with us. After all, come this weekend, I will have the opportunity to do so with a senior member of my father's side of the family. And that is the side with all the secrets and mystery identities. Surely, some additional clues can be harvested from this visit.

But...what to ask? After all, several of us cousins and assorted siblings have mulled over our joint dilemma for decades now—ever since that kid cousin of ours discovered my dad and his sis weren't Irish after all, but Polish. I've asked all the basic questions, and then racked my brain to come up with scenarios that might have been encountered by my grandparents if, indeed, those new reports were indeed correct. Questions like, "Did he have an accent?" After all, how could a man pass himself off as Irish if he were born and raised in Poland?

Putting myself in my ancestors' shoes is turning out to be a helpful technique. It at least has the virtue of helping me come up with more questions. Learning the history of the places where they supposedly originated also helps get the bigger picture, as does becoming more familiar with the local geography.

For this research trip, however, I am going to be quizzing my cousins about their cousins. Actually, I'll be asking them to recall the oldest of their relatives that they can still remember. After all, if I ask an eighty-year-old to tell me about the oldest relative he can remember from his childhood, that increases the reach of our oral history another couple generations. The personal remembrances reach far further than what I can glimpse of these people from the cut and dried reports from government documents.

My task for the next couple days, then, will be to compile a list of all the cousins on my father's side of the family that might have been alive during my cousins' lifetime. Perhaps names and locations will trigger memories. After all, it seems odd that our family would live in a complete vacuum. Since I've last visited this paternal cousin, I've learned that several relatives from both sides of my paternal grandparents' lines emigrated from Poland to various parts of New York. And then, too, there are those relatives of my grandfather's ill-fated mother who, as I discovered from DNA matches, ended up in Milwaukee. Why doesn't anyone in the family mention recalling those names?

It's a theory, so who knows the outcome of the experiment. But it's worth a try. Certainly worth the time to compile the list. If it doesn't yield any results, there will be plenty of other family history topics to discuss. After all, I only get to travel that way once in a long while. Every minute of our time will be valuable.

Tackling that First Step on the Learning Curve

If you guessed that the first hurdle on this night owl's learning curve is getting up early in the morning, you are correct. But there is so much more to fielding the world of genealogical information coming at me, full speed at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. And SLIG—this year or any year—is the place to practice learning fast.

Just think of it: a week-long opportunity to focus on one specific area of family history research. The ins and outs of the subject, the insider secrets, the nitty gritty: call it what you may, there is a lot of information to absorb in those (nearly) thirty hours of class time. For instance, in my selected course on Virginia research from the Colonial Period to the Civil War, the first day's sessions covered the state's geography, settlement and migration issues, plus an overview of the state's vital records, military records, and various court records.

Phew.

With a start like that, I'm torn. I realize I need to stick to my seat to hear the rest of the day's information, but in my mind, I'm simultaneously wanting to be down the street, already searching for copies of the kind of records we've been discussing in class. Those mental cogs can't help but start churning through all the research plan options. That's the energizing sort of talk that makes me want to jump up and take action. I'm beginning to see light at the end of these dark research tunnels.

Today's sessions will take the class a step deeper into the details. We talked about the state's geography yesterday; today we'll start discussing land records. We had an overview of court records yesterday; today, we'll examine just how the court system ran, prior to 1850.

And that's a good thing. Rumor has it that my most-wanted Virginia ancestor just happened to be a scoundrel escaping from bad debts left behind in Virginia when he—suddenly, apparently—immigrated to Tennessee. Imagine the paper trail he must have left behind.

One of the most valuable aspects of the SLIG class format, as opposed to conference sessions, is that, given the small class size and more ample time frame, instructors are readily available to address specific questions. I may not have much in this life, but I certainly have questions.

I particularly appreciated Barbara Vines Little's approach at the beginning of class, of taking a brief survey of class members' individual goals for being in class. When I brought up the one candidate among my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors, that renegade debtor from Nansemond County, her response about the research challenges I was up against—now non-existent county plus "badly burned" county—not only confirmed what I had already found, but also helps focus the delivery of class content for the upcoming sessions.

The nitty-gritty of learning the details—the survey of "what's out there"—is not all there is to SLIG. One of the most valuable aspects of the week, in my opinion, is the Plenary Session at the close of the first day. This is the session where, last year, LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson gave that masterful presentation which so deftly coincided with a turning point in my own research as I pursued the family tradition recalling the unnamed but long-remembered enslaved woman connected to my McClellan line and got to learn the story of her son, King Stockton.

This year's general session, in keeping with SLIG's silver anniversary, featured FamilySearch's Chief Genealogical Officer David Rencher. While his presentation was slated to be "A Look at Genealogy's Past, Present, and Future"—a topic on which he would be eminently qualified to speak—you can be sure he delivered so much more than just an overview, but cast the vision for what could be possible in our future. With a day starting me spinning my wheels in anticipation of peeling out and getting to work on the minutiae of my own research, it's quite gratifying to close that same day with such an inspiring outlook.



Disclaimer: While I am certainly honored to be designated as an Ambassador for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy 2020—and have shared about their impressive offerings for several years now—this year's designation comes to me with receipt of a modest discount to the registration fee. Nevertheless, my focus is on objectively sharing what aspects of the Institute readers at A Family Tapestry would likely find helpful, and I welcome the opportunity to continue serving as eyes and ears on site during this event for the benefit of my readers.

Updating Your Genealogy Go Bag

It's been a while since I last took to the road to do some serious research at a genealogical repository. Since I'll be heading to class next week at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, it occurred to me that this might be a good time to re-familiarize myself with rules and expectations at my library of choice for the week, to prepare myself for any curve balls that might be thrown in my direction. After all, if hotel elevators can hold me hostage from my intended destination in sunny California, anything is possible, once I venture out into the winter wonderlands of the rest of the country.

That's why I thought this might be a good time to update my genealogy go-bag. You know what a go-bag is: packed and ready for any moment's notice, it contains all the necessities for you to survive on for a set number of days; twenty-four and seventy-two hour kits seem to have grabbed the preferred positions for preparedness. The term originated with the military, where the concept was once known as a "bug-out bag," but usage evolved when the idea was adopted by law enforcement and emergency-response professionals. Now, it's not only residents in the path of fires, earthquakes, or tsunamis who get their go bags ready; people like expectant mothers or organ transplant candidates talk about their go bags, too.

If you really think about it, the very same concept can be used in many different applications. Anyone who wants to have a bag packed with specialized supplies or equipment—the type of stuff we'd rarely otherwise use—is, in essence, keeping a go bag at the ready. For my genealogy research trips, I've always had a go bag of sorts. Over the years, it generally held stuff like pedigree printouts, note pads, extra pens and pencils, and coins for photocopy machines.

But over those same years, research life has changed. While my Flip-Pal might have had a berth in my bag in prior years, it seldom goes on trips with me anymore; the camera in my phone or iPad does just as well for capturing the information on a document or a page from a book. Same goes for even the most rudimentary supplies. Coins for parking or copy machines are now sometimes displaced by credit card readers on parking meters or printing services. I can save details from library catalogs directly to my phone or laptop, bypassing the need for notebooks—or even pens or pencils, in some cases.

The key is to assure ourselves of what, in each library, never changes, and re-orient ourselves to what specific details have been upgraded. That's why I find it helpful to review what otherwise might be considered as the beginner's basics: I go back and look up the rules, maps, details, and contact info for the facilities where I've planned upcoming research trips. One serious remodeling project can turn everything I remembered about the place on its head.  

If you are a consistent researcher, you know the rules of the research road. Those rules, while seeming like standards, are always changing. Some archives expect visitors to give them the white-glove treatment, but others do not. Some want every possession but the pencil they provide you locked up until you leave the premises, while others kindly grant concessions. Some allow you to snap your own pictures or take your own scans, while others insist on doing the honors—for a hefty fee.

It's been a while since I spent any serious time at a genealogical library—in fact, not since attending the FGS Conference in Fort Wayne a couple years ago. Though I've been to several Salt Lake Institutes, I don't always avail myself of the city's giant genealogical resource: the Family History Library. It's about time to update myself on the current scene at the library.

Thus, I'm keeping the Family History Library's rules handy, as well as a map of the floor on which I'll be spending most of my time (pursuing Virginia, of course). I can access those pages from my phone, making quick double-checks easy.

On that same phone—or iPad, or laptop—I can also keep a running list of all the reference material I want to view, materials I've already earmarked from the Family History Library catalog. From that same electronic portal, I can refer back to my trees on Ancestry, MyHeritage or FindMyPast, in case I can't remember a detail, or want to see if any new discovery aligns with my previous understanding of the family situation.

It is a continuous evolution of how we have done research, this migration from the analog pen-to-paper approach to these digital tools. It certainly impacts which components of my go bag keep their valued position, and which ones give way to newer tools. Of course, each of us may have different versions of our can't-live-without research accoutrements. But I think each of us has found our own list to be changing, over our years of genealogical pursuit.

Yet, there are some components which will keep their corner of the go bag layout, no matter what. Two pairs of reading glasses in firm cases—always remembering the pair which got mangled in a research mishap years ago—will be one standard. And I suspect while my desperation snack of peanut M&Ms may give way to a more carb-responsible replacement, I'll always keep an emergency stash of work-through-lunch staples for when I'm hot on the microfilmed trail of that elusive great-great-grandmother's mother-in-law. Or whichever female ancestor whose maiden name has stumped me. 

Some Days . . .

There are some days, filled with good intentions, which take a wrong turn somewhere, and land us far from our expected destination. Like days when we—almost, thankfully—get stuck in the elevator (or at least can't access the ground floor so far below us). Or lose a credit card. Or get stuck in the rush hour traffic that wasn't supposed to happen until well after we reached our destination.

If that was the day intended for genealogy research, oh well. Things happen. There will always be another day.

When the unexpected happens, I'm still seeing the value of having a research plan. That way, I can always see my way toward my research destination. When detours knock me off the research track, at least I have a homing sense that allows me to right my course.

For the rest of this week, in my case—at least, if I can actually make my way home from this trip—I will be preparing for the research highlight of my year. I'll be leaving for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy this coming weekend, where I'll be attending the class I've been looking forward to, ever since SLIG registration opened last July: "Virginia from the Colonial Period to the Civil War: Her Records, Her People, Her Laws," with lead instructor Barbara Vines Little.

That is not the only goal for the upcoming week. On those precious free evenings after class is over, less than two blocks away from one of the world's largest genealogical libraries, I will be zeroing in on reference material from the Family History Library's card catalog, looking for my colonial Virginia ancestors.

Of course, I have several items already targeted for my week of research, but I know there are more I have yet to identify. That's where my grumbling about "some days" comes in. I could still use a few more days to check out the library's extensive collection and eliminate holdings which don't look as promising as others. After all, I only have so much time. True confessions: I'm a slow reader. And I generally don't get to the first book's punch line until five minutes before I have to leave for home.

In the meantime, planning does help eliminate some wasted time, and mitigate unexpected roadblocks like losing elevator service in hotels where I've been trapped on the ninth floor. I've learned to laugh about stuff like that. It sure beats the alternative.

Time to Get to Work

Today may be the springboard into another weekend—another weekend leading up to the holidays, no less—but that doesn't signal any excuses to kick back and forsake those research goals. This coming Sunday leaves only five weeks until I fly to the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. It's time to get all my Virginian ancestors organized for a great research opportunity. After all, my SLIG treat is to attend what may be Barbara Vines Little's last class on Virginia research there.

It would be so much easier if I could say I have one ancestral line to trace through to colonial Virginia. That, of course, turns out to be a far simpler task than I'd hoped. It turns out I have quite a few roots leading back to The Old Dominion—some of those ancestors taking the back roads, and not being particularly helpful in leaving clues as to the trail they took.

In planning out my own research journey (metaphorically speaking, of course; I'm not about to take any road trips before Christmas), I'll be taking the next week to scope out the lay of the land for several ancestral lines, as well as take time to introduce and review each family's migratory situation. I know, for instance, where these families came from, and where they eventually ended up—it's just their time while staying in Virginia that defies documentation.

In order to know where we're going with our research, it helps to know what we already have in hand—an inventory, of sorts, of the scattered bits and pieces already gathered about each of several ancestral families. From that inventory, hopefully, we can launch out into fresh research directions and lay out where else we can obtain records on the missing data for each generation.

Besides helping to orient this researcher in preparation for class at SLIG, there's another reason for organizing this inventory. After all, I will be spending a week a mere block away from one of the largest genealogical libraries in the continent. I may not be able to find what I'm seeking on these Virginia families online, but I may be able to identify resources in Salt Lake City which will help answer some research questions. In a library that size, it's always better to gather that go-to resource list before arriving in town. I may have a week ahead of me, but I don't have a moment to lose!

At Journey's End, New Tasks Emerging

Home again. It's been a productive research trip, although one which was very different from the usual tour through libraries or archives. To interview family members, explore the old homestead, or even traipse through family burial grounds takes a different kind of time than scrolling through microfilms or even reading listings in book form.

These are the research formats which take time to unfold. Conversations will meander over their natural course and interviewees take time to warm to the subject—let alone the interviewer. I may not have retrieved volumes of documents in this past week's research journey to northern Florida, land of my grandmother's roots, but I did return with loads of material.

All that material needs to be transformed into usable formats, the type where I can refer back to my notes and recreate the episodes when I gleaned the information for the first time. Some of that information is simply waiting to be harvested from my memory and ensconced on paper—before I forget the details I traveled so far to obtain.

In the meantime, it's been two weeks since I last checked up on my research progress on the four family trees I've been building. Don't be surprised that absolutely nothing has happened on the trees for my father, my mother-in-law, or my father-in-law. Remember, this past half year has been devoted to focusing on my mother's southern roots, thanks to preparation for the research course I took at SLIG this past January, and this very trip I've just completed.

Even progress on my own mother's tree slowed while I was out, driving through Suwannee County in search of more details on just what unfolded in my McClellan and related lines, in and about Wellborn. Not surprisingly, I was only able to add sixty nine names to my mother's family tree to bring that tree's tally up to 16,828.

Every single one of those names was added in the past week, thanks to a visit to the Suwannee Valley Genealogical Society library, where I met another McClellan descendant—from a line I wasn't even aware existed. Now that I and my distant cousin—fifth, to be exact—have compared notes, I'm documenting my way from this other researcher's progenitor down to the present. All told, I'm sure I'll add much more than just the sixty nine names I've found this week. These things, however, take time to prove their position on the McClellan tree—something which I not only enjoy doing, but which makes for a satisfying finish to a productive week of research.

With such a late arrival home last night—er, make that this morning—I'll continue the portion of my normal count which focuses on DNA testing progress tomorrow. Traveling across a continent can take time; factor in the three hour time difference, and it makes for a very long day, indeed. But that's not the only reason I'm postponing the count on my DNA test progress. As it turns out—and quite timely, as well—in the midst of my research trip, I've made one particularly pertinent discovery about one of my DNA matches.

The Power of Stories Repeated

Every now and then, I read things written by someone having absolutely nothing to do with genealogy, and yet—no surprise here—what I read leads back to thoughts about family history. Such was the case when, trying to catch up on my emails yesterday, I read a two-week-old blog post by marketing guru Seth Godin.

If you know anything about marketing, you may realize that successful selling is really about successful storytelling. Perhaps that was why, in one of his pithy daily posts, Mr. Godin remarked, "Forgotten stories have little power."

He went on to confirm the reverse: "Repeating stories (to ourselves and others)...makes those stories more powerful."

Thinking of the power of stories repeated reminded me of an old New York Times article by author Bruce Feiler. In "The Stories That Bind Us," published back in March, 2013, Mr. Feiler asserted that the best thing parents can do for their children is to "develop a strong family narrative." He cited a psychologist's observation that "the ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges."

That psychologist's observation, in working with children with learning disabilities, led researchers to develop a series of questions which they dubbed the "Do You Know?" scale—what people sometimes called the "20 Questions."

As one of the researchers, Robyn Fivush, later observed in an article she wrote for Psychology Today, "It is not knowledge of these specific facts [the answers to the twenty questions] that is important—it is the process of families sharing stories about their lives that is important."

Dr. Fivush urged families to "begin a family tradition of sharing the stories of our lives."

Her colleague in the research project, Marshall Duke—whose psychologist wife it was who had made the initial observation prompting him to develop the hypothesis—emphasized the same point: "Simply knowing the answers to questions will not produce the good outcomes" realized through their research. You cannot make your kids study for the "Do You Know?" test. Rather, "It is not the content of what is known that is the critical factor, but the process by which these things came to be known."

Because the twenty questions "test knowledge of things that children could not possibly have learned first hand"—in other words, details of the family's history before the children were even born, or were too young to personally remember—they would have had to receive it through person-to-person interaction, mainly through stories shared. Sharing stories takes time. And connects people.

Today is my last day in Florida, the land of my roots (well, at least the land of my grandmother's roots). It's likely all I'll be able to accomplish today will be to pack the bags and get us checked out of our hotel and into the airport shuttle.

Still, I can't help but think of one last episode on this epic family history research expedition. Like an encore to a wonderful performance, my mother's cousin—tour guide extraordinaire for our time, earlier this week, through the little town in northern Florida where my grandmother's family once lived—came back to visit me, once more.

After we had parted ways in Wellborn—she and her husband a day earlier than I and my long-suffering partner—the two of us had returned to visit my husband's sister and brother-in-law, relatively new year-round residents in Florida. From there, it was on to Orlando for business meetings for my better half.

Before we could even get to our next stop, this cousin had arrived home, still savoring thoughts of our wonderful visit to the land of our roots. I was hardly on the road when I got a message from her: "Call me right away." She had been thinking of all the family treasures she had received from my grandmother which she now wanted to pass on to me.

Underlying this thought process was the concern that someone would continue passing along the stories of our family's experiences over the generations. As we've seen all too clearly during our visit—and here, as I post my experience regarding the search for King Stockton—there are oral histories which have never found their way into print. There is no other way to preserve them than to insure that someone keeps the story alive for the next generation.

I had already known some of those unwritten stories. The story my mother told me, for instance, about the former slave who had had his story written in a book, was only something she told me. I have yet to find that book, but because of what I've been told, I know there was this certain man who did this certain thing. I want to pursue that story because I want to preserve that story.

But my mom's cousin had more of such stories to tell me. We talked almost constantly for the mere twenty four hours we were together, she telling me things that likely have not been written down anywhere—back when it happened, for the reason that it would meet with social censure, and recently, because we are at a loss for how to verify those "old stories."

With this in mind, she made arrangements to make the two-hour-long drive back to rendezvous with me at my hotel, bearing items which she dared not trust to the postal service. Her treasures included photo albums—thankfully with some pictures labeled—and various documents indicating the stepping stones of life's accomplishments.

No one in her immediate family was interested in these—besides, they weren't of her direct line, but materials concerning her aunt, who was my grandmother—and she knew I was keenly motivated to preserve such items.

She did, however, present them with one more question: was my daughter also taking an interest in these family stories? For, if she wasn't, who else could these family stories be passed down to? After all, it's in the repeating of these family stories that they provide strength. Remember, as Seth Godin observed, "Forgotten stories have little power."

It's in the stories remembered—and, thus, treasured—that we pass along the strength the next generation needs to grow and endure, despite adversity.

Yanking a Few More Bricks Out of the Proverbial Brick Wall

Sometimes, a research journey can unearth momentous discoveries. Other times, well, a few more chinks chipped out of the genealogical brick wall still help.

This time, the chips are falling from around the brick labeled Mary Charles McLeran. I've been stuck on the details of her life. I don't have a date of death for her, a dilemma since she was also the subject of a local legend, that of Mary of the Red Scarf.

Granted, she may not be one and the same as Ruben and Rebecca Charles' daughter Mary, reputedly shot by angered Native Americans who mistakenly took her for yet another one of those settlers encroaching upon their land. Still, red scarf or not, I have been able to locate a Mary, daughter of Ruben and Rebecca, who was very much alive, well into adulthood.

While this Mary outlasted not only her pioneer parents in the early days of northern Florida settlement but also her husband and only daughter, I still lacked some details about her life. Mainly, I wanted to know what became of her in her later years. Since I couldn't find any trace of her after the 1880 census—and even that entry I had doubts about—I needed to examine records to see if perhaps she had remarried.

This past week's visit to Suwannee County put some of my doubts to rest. Not entirely, of course, but I'm closer to gaining a resolution on her life's story.

Mary's story is not a happy one. With her father dying young by about 1835, and her mother in the 1850s—both meeting a violent end, according to local legends—Mary had married William T. McLeran, member of another local family whose surname subsequently had become well known in the area. Even Mary's marriage date is in doubt, because I have yet to find any documentation of that event; with some counties in the area lacking local records until long after that date, I may never find such a document.

I'm fairly sure the date of her marriage was before 1859, for that was the date of birth for her first and only child, a daughter she named Fannie. The second reason I feel that was a reasonable guess for date of her marriage was that her husband unexpectedly died the very next year, on May 29, 1860.

William McLeran's death in May was quickly followed by Fannie's, in June of that same year. After that, we can find the bereft Mary subsequently losing her sister Drucilla and caring for Drucilla's two surviving daughters, as well as temporarily caring for the children of her deceased brother Andrew.

I managed to find, among the records I thumbed through in the basement of the Suwannee County courthouse last week, a petition by the widow Mary McLeran to have her two nieces apprenticed to her for training in "housewifery."

From the date of that petition—though entered farther down the page, it was hard to read, possibly stating February 28, 1861—until the next time I found mention of Mary, it was far beyond the entry in the 1870 census which was the last date of which I had been most certain.

Now, it turns out, there were several letters written concerning the estate of Mary McLeran. While I can't yet determine the exact date of her passing, what I could glean from the various messages was that when Mary died, she had been left in a destitute state. I'm not sure why the nieces she had raised were not in a position to assist her, nor any of the few remaining more distant relatives. It just made me sad, in my visit to the courthouse two days ago, to discover the letter from an attorney to the local sheriff about her property.

Dear Sir:-
     Replying to your letter reference to the condemnation proceedings against the old of house of Mrs. McLeran, now deceased. The house is absolutely worthless and I suppose the best thing that can be done is to let any one tear it down who will do it for the wood, or let the city do it. I am working on the matter I spoke to you about the day that I came to Live Oak.
       Yours truly,
       [signed] M. M. Scarborough, Jr.

The date on the letter—a clue I could have used to determine Mary's actual date of death—was rather enigmatic: October 24 of what year? I checked another letter regarding the same issue—what to do with the "worthless" property the widow McLaren had left behind. The date there on an "Administrator's Notice" was given as July 11, 1899. Poor Mary had undoubtedly passed away before that point, but a reasonable approximation could be given as the year of 1899, or possibly early in the winter of the preceding year.

Staking my claim on a few extra numbers in an ancestor's vital stats is hardly satisfactory in the wake of a story as intriguing—and yet so tragic—as Mary's must have been. Just in these scant details, I feel for her in the continual plight of her life's story. While hers seems to be a life lived in the gaps—before documentation was widespread in the pioneer settlements of territorial Florida, at the establishment of a new county, or resident in other counties with less carefully-held records—surely, there was much more that could have been told, if anyone had valued the story that would have been her life's tale.


Above pictures of documents retrieved and photographed by the author on February 6, 2019, at the Suwannee County Courthouse, Live Oak, Florida. 

It's Complicated

One of my goals, in traveling to northern Florida to research my maternal grandmother's roots, was to see if I could explain what I felt was a myth buster regarding a local story. This week was my chance to practice communicating that defense of my hypothesis: Mary Charles may have been shot, but she didn't die from the wounds allegedly inflicted upon her by native tribesmen when she bolted out the front door of her pioneer parents' home without the agreed-upon red scarf sign of protection.

You may recall the story of Mary Charles, the young woman who supposedly was killed by Indians as the result of a momentary blunder. Local Suwannee County historian Eric Musgrove had shared that story in the Suwannee Democrat years back, and I had subsequently found it online at the county's own website. This week was my chance to visit with him and interview him about the sources for this story.

Eric Musgrove prefers to dub this scenario a legend. It's just an oral history passed down for many decades, as he puts it. And yet, I had been able to trace the life of one local woman named Mary Charles, who seems likely to have been daughter of the same parents as the Mary Charles of the Suwannee County legend. This Mary certainly lived well beyond childhood, having married and claiming a daughter of her own. While I have yet to determine this Mary's date of death, I can assure you it was well after any threat of attack had been removed from the area—certainly long after the Charles family had ceased operating the ferry by Charles Springs which had been the site of local tensions between white settlers and Native American inhabitants of that area in northern Florida.

True, Ruben and Rebecca Charles, operators of the ferry and stage coach stop, could have had more than one daughter named Mary. The one I found might have been born after the first had been killed. That scenario has been repeated in many family histories, and I can't assume it would be any different in the facts underlying this "legend."

However, let's review the details I've found. First, I had stumbled upon the discrepancy while searching for something else: whom the parents of my second great grandmother, Emma Charles, might have been. I found Emma and her siblings in the 1860 census in the household of someone else: Melburn and Drucilla Odum and their daughter Mabel. Along with the Charles siblings and these unknown adults, there were two Hines girls. How did all of these people connect?

Looking for the Hines girls in the 1870 census, I found them in the home of Mary McLeran. Now I had another problem: who was Mary McLaren? And why did she have an Odum daughter and a Hines daughter in her household?

The search was now on for the identity of Mary McLaren—and for whatever became of Mabel Odum's parents. It took searching through some Suwannee County probate files—thankfully, just after the county was formed in December of 1859—to discover Mary's statement that she was wife of William T. McLaren. The search for Drucilla revealed Mary's statement in Drucilla's probate file that they were sisters, and a marriage record in Madison County indicated, at the occasion of her first marriage, that Drucilla's maiden name had been Charles.

Thus, that made her sister's maiden name also Charles. As in Mary Charles. Granted, there could have been other people in that area with the same name. Thankfully, an entry in the 1850 census tied Mary and Drucilla together in the same household—that of Rebecca Charles, widow of Ruben Charles, the family of the legend of Mary and the Red Scarf.

It did take a lot to put those connections together. Even though I was able to link the paper trail together into a neat—and fairly convincing—package, as Eric Musgrove observed in yesterday's visit, there is no way to tell for sure. No paper trail, no written documentation, no written testimony of eyewitnesses. Just the story, passed down through generations, leaving us with the impression that Ruben and Rebecca Charles' daughter Mary was the victim of a tragic slaying in her youth.

Searching through the records at the courthouse yesterday didn't reveal much more to strengthen the conclusion. But it did turn up a few leads, as did my visit to the genealogical society's library the previous day. Fortunately, as Charles was a significant name in the area for so many years, I didn't have to search for long to find other documents to help piece together the life of Mary Charles McLaren, even if she doesn't turn out to be the fabled Mary of the Legend of the Red Scarf.

The Definition of Kin

"We may be related," the woman just inside the door to the Suwannee Valley Genealogical Society library announced to me as I stepped in to wrap up my second day's research in the vicinity of my McClellan roots in northern Florida. "I think we are cousins."

A cousin I had never before met—let alone been aware of—was the stranger who had received my online query about the society's library holdings. (Frankly, I was quite jealous that a place as small as the vicinity surrounding Wellborn could boast not only their own library, but the building in which to house their collection, as well.)

In preparation for my visit, I had sent in my questions ahead of time, just in case there was any chance that the books I was seeking might be in their holdings. There have been a number of history books published on the county as well as the town of Wellborn, and though I am aware of them—and the tidbits they hold about my family's history—that doesn't make them any more easy to access. Most were privately published or done locally in a short run, with nary a copy still available for sale, new or used. Not even on Amazon.

Naturally, in my email preceding my visit, I mentioned the surnames I was seeking—not only McClellan, but McLaren, Tison, Townsend, and Charles. Especially Charles. The society had notebooks prepared by members on their research findings on a wide variety of surnames, including some of the ones of interest to me. Thus, before she ever met me, this society volunteer knew we'd be related. We both, as it turns out, descend from McClellans.

Just how, we didn't know, right away. It took some sketching out. A bit of double checking on two different genealogy database programs to make sure. After comparing notes on both our lines—it turns out her line, in my records, is a complete black hole after the patriarch of her McClellan line in early, territorial Florida—we decided on the verdict: fifth cousins.

Well, howdy. It's always nice to meet another cousin.

When I took the Advanced Southern Research course at SLIG last January, one of our instructors had explained the real definition of the term, "kin"—at least the way you'll find it used in the South. You may know the word as a synonym simply to explain that two people are related. Our SLIG instructors took it farther than that. According to our intrepid southern research experts, using the word "kin" means "yep, we're related, but we can't explain just how right now."

In other words, it's too complicated.

The entire South, according to these instructors, is so interrelated as to reduce the explanation of how anyone is connected to anyone else to one word: kin.

You from the South? Great. Me, too. We must be kin.