Genealogy Ennui

 

Today was one of those days, the type when nothing seems to turn out right. A weekend should hardly begin that way, but perhaps I can just blame it on genealogy ennui.

For my weekend research tasks, I like to tackle something light, often veering from my weekday research path. I started out at my computer, seated in front of a window filled with signs of spring in ample sunlight—and ended in threatening cloudiness. What had happened?

My thought had been to put the FamilySearch Labs latest promising project—the Full Text search—through its paces on another research puzzle I've been tackling off and on for a year. Truth be told, it was just last month after I reported my King Carter discovery in answer to my sister's question that she promptly followed up with another question: "And what about our Mayflower connection?"

Rather demanding of her, I grumbled to myself, but had to admit those elusive documents on that Tilson case were, um, still elusive.

But now, there's FamilySearch Labs, right? And now, we can find anything. Right?

Maybe not. We can find a U.S. Land and Probate record if it was digitized and added to the enormous FamilySearch.org collection. Oh, and if it hadn't been lost in a courthouse fire, or a flood, or an act of war. But not—surely—if it hadn't been drawn up at all. Right now, I'm beginning to wonder if that last possibility might have been the true case.

See, all I needed was a handy-dandy digitized copy of the will of my fifth great-grandfather William Tilson, showing his acknowledgement of his son named Peleg. Easy, right? But looking for any such document in the nebulous place where William had settled in southwest Virginia—the county lines kept shifting—brought no shouts of victory. Nor did a similar search in the Tennessee wilderness where he had settled bring even a sigh of relief.

To the credit of the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search, it did lead me to a document in Washington County, Tennessee, showing an inventory of the estate of one William Tilson, deceased. Whether that was my William Tilson, I can't yet say, but someone named Peleg Tilson certainly went shopping for some tools when that inventory was made public early in the year 1825.

Since there wasn't a will—William S. Erwin was noted as administrator, but I haven't yet found any document appointing him to that position—not only do I lack a record to tie my Peleg to his father, but I have no way to know whether this William Tilson was one and the same as my fifth great-grandfather. Without that, I lack the connection between my paper trail to Peleg and William's paper trail to the original passengers on the Mayflower.

However, what I found does bring up a problem. I've long known that a Find A Grave memorial exists back in Virginia for William Tilson. The date of death given on that memorial is 1833. If you look closer at the memorial, though, the Find A Grave volunteer noted that the headstone, by now, is illegible. There is no way to read the name on the headstone, let alone the date of death. The volunteer reported that, according to the historian for the cemetery, that is "most likely" the grave of William Tilson.

Where did the date 1833 come from? Noticing that the comment on Find A Grave indicated William's service in the Revolutionary War, I cross-checked his information at D.A.R. There, for Patriot William "Tillson," the date of death aligned more closely with the estate inventory I had found in Tennessee: 1825.

At this point, feeling about as unsettled as the weather swirling around outside my window, I wasn't sure which direction to take next. For all I know, there could have been one William in Tennessee and another across the border in southwest Virginia. Or this could have been a case of both identities being one and the same person, owning property in Tennessee, but dying unexpectedly after traveling home to visit his daughter in Virginia. Until I found a document to say so, I can't really know for sure. And there's the rub: what if there is no document to check?

Only a Genealogist Would Know

 

Only a genealogist would be the one to spot the appearance of a name in a family tree and realize it matches one from a relative over a hundred years ago. As I've been planning my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, behind the scenes, I've been scurrying to complete a year-long project to confirm the relationships in my entire Tilson line—for those ever-present DNA matches, of course.

In the process, what should I run across but a twentieth century woman whose married name became exactly the same as my third great-grandmother's birth name from a century ago. Before she married, this more modern Rachel was a Clouse, but in marrying a Tilson, she acquired a name which has resonated in my ancestral history. What was more curious was that this Rachel Clouse also happened to be a Tilson descendant, herself, as well as a new Tilson spouse. How did that happen?

You know I couldn't resist this rabbit hole. I had to check out her husband's family history. It took rewinding his family's story for five more generations before I found the connection: my fifth great-grandparents William and Mary Marcie (Ransom) Tilson. I descend from their son Peleg and his daughter Rachel Tilson, while this more recent Rachel descended from Peleg's daughter Jennet through her grandson Peter Clouse's line. And that Rachel Clouse married a Tilson named Thomas, who came from a long line of Tilsons descending from—you guessed it—Thomas Tilson, son of William and Mary Marcie.

Whether they knew it or not, that Rachel, born in 1905, married her fourth cousin once removed, Thomas Tilson. They spent their life together in Texas, far removed from either the Washington County, Tennessee, home of my ancestral Rachel Tilson, or the original Massachusetts settlement of her Tilson forebears. Whether removed by distance or time, the familial connection of this Rachel and Thomas was likely one they weren't even aware of when it came time in 1924 for the couple to say "I do." Unless, of course, they—like all genealogists—kept track of their family history.

Building out that branch of the Thomas Tilson line—one I hadn't yet tackled in my year-long project—served to add several new names to my mother's tree, just in time for this first biweekly count of the new year. Make that 388 new names, to be exact. Now my mother's tree has a total of 36,599 individuals documented.

As I worked on plans for the Twelve Most Wanted for this year, I also added names to my in-laws' tree. Though there were only sixty six new names added—I stumbled upon an undone branch of my father-in-law's Kelly line—that tree is starting off the new year with 34,157 people, enough to help connect a few more DNA matches to that line.

Again for this year, I'll be checking back every two weeks to get encouragement from the mounting numbers and research progress. It helps to see the numbers. And it certainly is inspiring to find the stories—even the unexpected little details like discovering that my fourth cousin once removed married her fourth cousin once removed.

 

Getting Along With the Long S

 

It can be hard enough trying to track down an ancestor in previous centuries without having to consider changes in the everyday customs and conventions we take for granted. Handwriting, for instance, is one of those constants that we presume will always remain the same—but doesn't. In continuing my months-long pursuit of Tilson ancestors for everything from DNA matches to admittance into the Mayflower Society, I've run into a snag regarding that very detail: time-bound conventions of handwriting and what is called the "long s."

This all came to the forefront as I was reviewing the last of my Tilson DNA matches at Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. Less than a month ago, I was close to wrapping up confirmation of those matches descending from my fourth great-grandfather, Peleg Tilson. Having only a few more to review, I was working on the descendants of Peleg's daughter Mercy. According to the 1911 Tilson Genealogy drawn up by Mercer Vernon Tilson, Mercy had been born in Saint Clair, Virginia, and had married someone by the name of James Rigsbey.

Other than the instance of that one name, there were no further details provided in the Tilson book. At Ancestry, however, there was a hint leading to a register of marriages in Washington County, Tennessee, just over the state line from Saint Clair, Virginia, a location to which several of my Tilson ancestors had moved. The problem, though, was that the record for a groom named James Rigsby was coupled with a bride-to-be named "Mapy Gittson."

Looking more closely at the register, I noticed that the format included a preprinted "19—" in the section designated for the officiant's return. In other words, this was not the original document completed at the time of the August 7, 1807, marriage ceremony, but a modern transcription of older records.

I wondered whether handwriting might have been an issue for whoever had transcribed the record to the post-1900 register, and looked for the original document. As it turned out, the FamilySearch collection had several digitized versions of the transcribed record, but I finally found what appeared to be an original version (though labeled "Damaged Document(s)").

At first glance, it did indeed look like James Rigsby had married someone with the unfortunate moniker of Mapy Gitson. That, at least, was what the handwriting on the cover of the Washington County record seemed to read. Again, that could have been drawn up by someone at a later date, set to the task of organizing court records. But looking inside the cover, pulling up the actual document itself, the harried hand which drew up the record caused me to wonder whether something else was at play here.

In completing the document laying out the requirements of a marriage bond for the recently-formed state of Tennessee, the clerk seemed to be in a rush, judging from the scribbled first letter of each of the marriage parties' given names. Then, too, the "s" in the two entries of the surname Rigsby were so scribbled as to be barely distinct from the preceding letter.

Looking at the formation of the capital "T" for both the given name of the other man listed in the marriage bond—Thomas Rigsby—and the bride-to-be, the rounded cross stroke forming the top of the capital "T" in Thomas could have been the same stroke forming what had been interpreted as a "G" in the bride's maiden name. A stray stroke across what might otherwise have been the double "l" in an alternate spelling of Tilson—"Tillson"—could easily have been misinterpreted by a transcriber as "Gittson."

More than that, though, I wondered whether the convention once dubbed the "long s" might have come into play when the clerk filled out the blanks in the marriage bond form. The "long s" had a specific list of rules for usage, especially for typeset documents.

Admittedly, for the preprinted portion of the form, in not one instance was that writing convention included; for American forms of that time period, there was already a shift away from the decidedly British convention. For handwriting of that time period—which had a separate list of rules of usage than that of the typesetting norms—I have seen appearances of the "long s" well into the nineteenth century. Perhaps old habits die hard.

Basically, the "long s" was a letter quite similar in shape to the letter "f." The difference between the "long s" and a regular "f" was that the crossbar of the lower case "f" went entirely through the downstroke, whereas for the "long s" it only protruded from the left side of the letter. In addition, in the cursive format of the "long s" the bottom curve goes to the left, whereas for the regular letter "f" it loops around to the right before ascending to form the next letter in the word to be written.

Considering that, I wondered whether "Mapy" was actually a sloppily-contrived "long s" combined with a second "round s" as often happened in handwriting of that time period. It was already obvious that the clerk who drew up this document was rather rushed in forming the "s" in Rigsby, so it could be possible that he was writing "Massy" for the bride's name, mis-hearing the actual name, "Mercy." Or perhaps the accent of the time might have softened the "r" sound so much as to be less audible than we would pronounce it today, thus leading to a misspelling of the bride's name.

No matter what the cause for this odd rendering of the bride's name—whatever it might have turned out to be—the "long s" in handwritten documents was a convention that I have seen well into the 1800s in court records, long after it was considered outdated for printed formats. Still, that leaves me with the burden of finding records to support such a hypothesis. For any further written material referring to James Rigsby's wife by name, I can find none. So far, I've looked for his will, burial records, and other likely places where the woman's name might have made its rare appearance, without any results, positive or negative.

The only encouraging sign I can find so far is that this couple chose to name their son Peleg, a Bible name which, though not seen often in our current time, did make a showing during that time period. In fact, it was a name which appeared more than once in the extended Tilson family of that generation. More importantly, Peleg just happened to be the name of Mercy's father—an encouraging sign for those of us wondering just who it was that James Rigsby chose to marry in Washington County, Tennessee, back in August of 1807.

Image above from the FamilySearch.org collection of Washington County, Tennessee, Marriage Licenses, 1787-1950, Bonds 1787-1950, image 1784.

It's All Relative

 

It seems odd, now that I've switched tracks to research my paternal Polish roots this month, to compare what I can find on DNA matches for both sides of my family. Still carrying forward that earlier goal of checking all my ThruLines matches for my maternal Tilson line, I am now running that task side by side with the race to wrap up Aunt Rose's story of her parents from Poland. Talk about a contrast: examining colonial American ancestors alongside descendants of immigrant ancestors here merely since the last few years of the nineteenth century.

The Tilson project led me to DNA relatives who were at least fourth cousins, and more likely to be fifth cousins or even more distantly related. The challenge in tracing that paper trail was to find mentions of familial connection in documents such as old wills from the 1700s. The challenge in finding Aunt Rose's relatives, once I discovered her origin in Pomerania, is to locate any actual documents—though I'm happy to at least have transcriptions for a start.

On the far-removed Polish side of the relative equation, my DNA matches are more along the lines of third cousins. Think about it: our family just returned from an out of state trip in which my daughter helped her second cousin once removed prepare for her wedding. If my daughter has children of her own, they will become this bride's third cousins. While the number may make that seem like a distant relationship, in our family's world, a third cousin can be quite close. Such would be the relationship with these DNA matches who are both mine and Aunt Rose's relatives—if only our family had kept up the connections.

A relationship can seem so close, and yet it can also be a calculation which makes it seem so distant, so far removed. One third cousin might be no more than a name on paper at a DNA testing company, while another could be the next guest at a family celebration. It's all relative—in more ways than one.

The Complications of Pedigree Collapse

 

When constructing a family tree, perhaps we expect a diagram with lines stretching straight back into the past, never giving a thought to the possibility of tangled lines crossing and recrossing each other. However, when a family settles in a limiting area—whether the proverbial desert island or a small valley enclosed by impassible mountains—their children's choice of mates becomes limited, as well.

I never thought of southwest Virginia or the neighboring land in northeastern Tennessee as being land-locked in any limiting way. Apparently, when searching for a prospective spouse, some of my forebears may not have looked as far away as they could have done, for one DNA match found on my Tilson ThruLines results pulled me up short this weekend. I totally forgot about the possibility of pedigree collapse in this longstanding family settlement.

Working my way through the matches sharing my fourth great-grandfather, Peleg Tilson, I had just advanced to another of his daughters, someone with the rather common given name of Mary. To make matters worse, Mary happened to marry someone with a name designed to create an even more challenging research prospect: John Brown.

I didn't have much detail on this couple, other than the information I had gleaned from an old Tilson genealogy published in 1911, but supposedly, the first DNA match I had for this ThruLines entry shared far more genetic material with me than I had come to expect.

Most of the matches connected to me through Peleg Tilson's descendants are at least my fifth cousins, sometimes even fifth cousins once removed. If a cousin at that distant level of relationship shows up in my matches at all, the centiMorgan count is generally very low. True, according to Blaine Bettinger's Shared centiMorgan Project at DNA Painter, a fifth cousin once removed could share up to eighty centiMorgans with me—but could also approach zero. An expected average is likely to be around twenty one centiMorgans, but in many cases of my Tilson cousins, the numbers dwindle precipitously lower than most people consider reliable.

Contrary to those minuscule matches, though, the DNA match with the highest count under Peleg's daughter Mary came in at fifty eight cMs, which surprised me with its stark difference. Taking a closer look, I realized this match was already tagged in my records as a match—for a different ancestor. That other ancestor came from my maternal grandmother's Broyles side of the family, while the Tilson line reaches down to her husband's line.

While I already knew this DNA cousin was connected through my grandmother's Broyles aunt, in seeing this result, I recalled that the aunt had married someone who came from a family with a long history of calling that corner of Tennessee home. With yet another unhelpful name to research—this family was named Jones—rather than taking the usual approach to checking ThruLines results from the ancient ancestor forward in time to the current generation, I worked my way backwards on the ThruLines results. I wanted to see just how this Broyles cousin was connected to my Tilson line.

Thus, I worked my way through documentation from this Jones cousin, backwards in time until the Jones surname gave way to that other research challenge, the Brown surname. Along the way, I spotted collateral lines with names too familiar to be coincidental name twins, and my head ached with thoughts of how much this tree may call for cleaning up duplicate entries. Cousins marrying cousins and other near misses make for many déjà vu moments in family history. Time to warm up that "merge with duplicate" button on my family tree.

Celebrating Mile Markers

 

A memory from childhood surfaced last week while driving through Kansas for a cousin's wedding: watching mile markers fly by on the side of the road. As the never-changing landscape tricked me into thinking we weren't gaining any distance whatsoever, the changing numbers on the mile markers reassured me that we were, indeed, making progress.

Now that I'm back home and finally attending to my current weekend project of sorting through DNA matches, I realize it would help to celebrate passing those significant mile markers here, too.

I've been using Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool to sort through my many mystery cousins and place them in my family tree. I've felt like I am still stuck in the same place as I was, almost a year ago, in working on the ThruLines suggestions for my Tilson ancestors. Granted, my current target is Peleg Tilson, my fourth great-grandfather, so any cousin matches I find would be very distant cousins, indeed. Taking the time to trace each of seventy three DNA matches' line of descent from Peleg to the present is time consuming—at least, if that effort includes locating supporting documentation for each step through the generations.

For instance, in the way ThruLines organizes their readout for a given most recent common ancestor, the cousins are separated into subsets based on the respective child of the ancestor from whom they descend. So, in Peleg's case, I started at the top of the list with his oldest daughter Jennet. That meant tackling a list of twenty five matches, just from Jennet's line.

Clue: that took lots of time. It is not simply a matter of taking Ancestry's word for it that a line of descent is just how the majority of their subscribers said it was. I needed to find documentation before adding anyone into this collateral line.

I don't remember when I began the process, but when I finally closed out the last of Jennet's descendants in my match list, it occurred to me that it might be more encouraging to take time to celebrate passing that mile marker. After all, vetting twenty five cousin matches was worth celebrating—and I'll certainly need the encouragement to tackle the other nine of Peleg's children represented among my remaining DNA matches in the Tilson line.

Starting this weekend, I finally began the first of my DNA matches linked to Peleg's second daughter, Ruth Tilson. While this second iteration will certainly not be as taxing as the effort to complete the list for her sister Jennet's descendants, there are at least five DNA matches descended from Ruth's line. By the time I complete that list, albeit a far shorter one than my first challenge, I will take a bit of time to pat myself on the back for having completed that series, as well. We all need some encouragement along the way.

While some of the other Tilson lines descending from Peleg have only a few matches to confirm, there are two more which include at least ten DNA matches apiece. Working through each of these lines will help add to the records I've amassed concerning the collateral lines in this extended family. While that is encouraging in itself—it helps me meet one of my overarching research goals—it also occurred to me that if we don't celebrate our own research progress, perhaps there might not be much progress to follow. The whole tedious process reminds me that sometimes we need to be our own best cheerleaders.  

Extending Family

 

This past week, our family has been in Kansas, where my daughter was able to help with wedding preparations for her second cousin once removed. Only a genealogist's child could relate to a label like that. Perhaps more than the average family historian, I've had to reach even farther than that to place my DNA matches in their right position in the family tree. It's no surprise, then, to see how large my family trees have become, over nine years since sending the original DNA test away for lab results.

Right now, that means my parents' combined family tree has grown to 34,846 documented individuals. In the last two weeks alone, I've added 323 more names to that tree, mostly by reviewing the ThruLines results linked to my mother's Tilson line. And I've hardly scratched the surface with the results yet to review just in that Tilson family.

Because this month's Twelve Most Wanted research project focuses on a relative in my father's ancestry, most of my work has involved my own family tree, but I did check out a couple details on my in-laws' tree, mainly because the bride-to-be relates to us through my father-in-law's family. While that tree grew by a modest two additional names, the total number of individuals in that tree also reaches far and wide at 34,021 names. Lots of distant cousins documented there.

While new additions to our DNA accounts at all of the five companies where my husband and I have tested have grown ever so slowly—only two more matches for me in the past two weeks, and a miserly one match for my husband at Ancestry, for instance—there are still plenty of unidentified DNA cousins yet to place in their proper place in the family tree. I'd say I've still got my work cut out for me in making sense of that ever-extending family.

Double-Checking Details

 

Though I groan and complain when I uncover confusion about double identities in my family tree, if I work through the details thoroughly, there usually is a way to spot the telltale differences. Thankfully, spending some time last week in double-checking details did exactly that for two men, both sporting the name Anderson McMahan, who had become conflated into one person in my tree. That has led to reworking the clues laid out in ThruLines suggestions for several DNA matches, all of whom supposedly were descended from my Tilson line, a line reaching back to Mayflower connections. 

It certainly pays to rework the research on a specific ancestor. If you'll recall, last week I had the nagging feeling that I was not working with records for one man named Anderson McMahan, but two. Though the two both lived in Cocke County, Tennessee, and were born within nineteen months of each other, they definitely had different genealogies.

While working step by step, gathering every document I could find to support the facts about each man, I ran across something which helped me ascertain the real DNA nexus between the one man's descendants and myself. It was through his wife, not his own line, as ThruLines had indicated, that there was a connection reaching back to my Tilson ancestor. For all those DNA matches, Ancestry.com's ThruLines had picked up a much-copied error from other subscribers' family trees. But none of them made sense.

Now that I've spotted the correct path to our most recent common ancestor—it was through one Anderson McMahan's wife—I'm in the process of placing all those DNA matches in their correct spot in my family tree. The connection turned out to be through Anderson's wife, Echo Ford, daughter of Fletcher White Ford and Marena Coggins. 

It was through a volunteer's entry at Find a Grave for Anderson's wife Echo's own memorial that I spotted the surname Coggins. Since I had made a practice for years of adding into my family tree all the descendants of collateral lines, I had run into many branches of the Coggins line, intermarried into my own Tennessee kin, so thankfully the name stood out.

Unfortunately, I had selected the wrong set of parents for my Anderson McMahan, Echo's husband, so back to the beginning I went, ripping out all the names attached to Anderson in my tree, and entering all the correct individuals. Since, contrary to what ThruLines had asserted, Anderson was not my direct line back to my Tilson forebears—the key to this whole ThruLines exercise—I needed to add the correct identity for his parents, then follow the line of descent to link nearly ten more DNA matches to my family tree.

The exercise was worth the effort—at least, that's what I'd say for any family historians using ThruLines to help connect DNA matches to their tree. But it also reminds me of the value of going step by step through confirming documentation—as many as can be found, not just accepting one or two records as confirmation that we've identified the correct person. As Miss Merry pointed out last week, a lot of us have name twins out there in our family's past, some of them more challenging to untangle than others.

Seeing Double

 

While tools and techniques may be handy for getting a job done, sometimes tools need to be recalibrated and techniques need to be revised. Bottom line: no matter which handy device is used, we're still obligated to keep our eyes wide open for signs of error.

Behind the scenes this month, I've been slogging my way through my many DNA matches with whom I share Tilson ancestors. In particular, last month I began a review of all my ThruLines DNA matches at Ancestry.com whose most recent common ancestor shared with me is my fourth great-grandfather Peleg Tilson.

Anyone who has used ThruLines knows the tool often works like a charm. Where it fails is in those sticky wickets where multiple Ancestry subscribers have repeated another user's mistaken entry in their trees. In my particular case this week, I'm beginning to think I am seeing double, for the same supposed ancestor can be found in online documents with conflicting information.

I know, I know: people in past generations were just as prone to fudge on their age as teenagers at a liquor store might, today. Early marriages, draft dodging, financially-beneficial programs for seniors: some opportunities—or dangers—have built in incentives to appear as someone the person is not. But in this case, I wasn't sold on the notion that I was researching a man with ulterior motives for changing his personal information. I began to wonder if I was truly seeing double with this case.

Several of my Tilson DNA matches included in their line of descent a man by the name of Anderson McMahan. Based on documents I had already attached to my tree for Peleg Tilson's various descendants, I could not determine exactly how this man fit in my tree. In puzzling over this disconnect with ThruLines, I realized I couldn't exactly determine specific details about Anderson McMahan at all. Some documents gave his date of birth as 1901, some as 1902. Granted, census records provide estimates for year of birth, but birth records pinpoint specific dates, not ranges.

To complicate matters, all records—no matter whether in agreement with the others or not—showed a man who lived in Cocke County, Tennessee. It would have helped if the location which was linked to each date of birth was different, but it wasn't. It was time to compare documents, side by side, to see whether I was researching one man or two.

The draft registration form for World War II was where I began the comparison. There are several reasons for this. Not only could I glean the specific birth date, but the card included an address for current residence, current employer, physical attributes, and even a place for the man's signature. It would be easy to spot the differences between the two men, if that was the case with this hunch about seeing double.

Sure enough, I did find two men by the same name of Anderson McMahan. Though neither had a middle name to help differentiate them, I discovered one's residence was given as Newport in Cocke County, while the other provided an address in Hartford. The former indicated his contact person as the rather nondescript "Mrs. Anderson McMahan," while the latter could be contacted care of Mr. Lewis McMahan. Key to this search, the Newport resident gave his date of birth as October 15, 1902, while the Hartford man was born on January 16, 1901.

From this information, I then searched for two entries in the 1920 census, early enough to hopefully find each man still living in the home of his parents. In 1920, the younger man was indeed living at home, the oldest child in the household of Cicero and Lanie McMahan. Their residence was listed in Hartford as Bennett and Em Johnson Road. The older man turned out to be the youngest of the children in his household, with the previously-named Lewis as his father, and a mother by the name of Sarah. Their residence, also in Hartford, was on Clark and Johnson Mountain Road.

Feeling quite pleased with my research progress, I then checked for dual entries for Anderson McMahan in the 1930 census. Suddenly, I wasn't seeing double any more. Gone was any sign of the younger of the two men. The older of the two was still living in the household of Lewis and Sarah, and still showing as a single man. I noted that there was a lodger also listed in the household—an older woman by the name of Fannie Ellison, who by 1955 became this Anderson's wife. By that age, though, it is unlikely that she and her husband would be the couple producing children who eventually became my DNA matches.

That, however, was not the end of the search. There was more out there on the missing Anderson—in particular, a Find A Grave memorial for an Anderson McMahan who was born on October 15, 1902. This discovery, while welcome, made me wonder whether, instead of seeing double, I was now simply suffering from blurry vision. The reason? The handy link to the memorial for Anderson McMahan's wife showed me that perhaps the ThruLines readout had the whole family history for this line of descent plain old wrong. Instead of helping me find the nexus between Anderson and his supposed Tilson ancestor, in reading his wife's family names in her transcribed obituary, I could plainly see where the connection should be. Anderson's wife, Echo Ford—if the transcription of her obituary is reliable—was the one whose ancestry connected with my Tilson line, likely through her mother, Irene Coggins, as there were several Coggins descendants in Tennessee who could claim a relationship to that same Tilson line.

There's more research ahead for me, but at least I'm pointed in the right direction now. Whenever that sixth sense of seeing double makes itself known, it never hurts to double-check that hunch. In some cases, there really are two men by the same name in the same town, no matter how unusual that name might have seemed. 

Tilsons in One Day

 

With one day remaining to this month of research, it hardly seems possible that I will accomplish my task. But what can be done if we don't give it our best try, right?

Today's task is to begin the same DNA-matching process at Ancestry.com as I've been doing for the past two weeks for other family lines. Only this last-ditch attempt focuses on one surname which will likely become the impossible dream: to place each of my Tilson DNA matches on the right collateral line in my family tree.

Think of it: by the numbers, I've already got forty six matches outlined in ThruLines for my fifth great-grandfather, William Tilson. But William is just the beginning. Though the DNA would most likely not bear out any relationships more distant, it is William's own mother, Janet Murdock, whose genealogy leads us back to the days of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins.

If there is one complaint I have about my fifth great-grandfather, it is that he and his young bride decided to strike it out in the wilderness of southwest Virginia colony, leaving their extended family behind in Plympton, Massachusetts. Of course, if I had any hope of obtaining documentation sufficient to trace this family line any further, it would be back in Massachusetts, not in the wilds of Virginia. And that is where I and the Mayflower Society will be at an impasse—unless they know something I have yet to uncover.

Meanwhile, I thought it might be a nice gesture to organize the Tilson family history a bit more by tidying up my DNA matches. Hence, my rush to do so in this last day of the month, before another research project comes my way.

Surprisingly, despite the distant relationships, I have Tilson DNA matches sharing up to almost sixty centiMorgans with me. Admittedly, there are also plenty on the other end of the spectrum, precariously dangling from the doubtful edge of identical by descent. Still, with ThruLines providing a suggested line of descent based on other subscribers' research, I can follow those lines for myself and check them against documentation. In some cases, ThruLines has been a welcome guide as I sketch out what CeCe Moore used to call a "quick and dirty" family tree for these new-to-me lines.

Besides their longstanding history in the United States, the Tilsons have been fascinating in other ways. From the place where they first shook me off their historic trail—back in southwest Virginia—they had moved on to Tennessee and, reportedly, Kentucky. I've run into other Tilsons in Texas and states beyond. There are numerous Tilson kin, so much so that I need to tread carefully to ensure I'm not mixing up two cousins by the same name. And the family line comes with an instruction manual of sorts: the 1911 Tilson Genealogy, which I've compared with now-available corroborating documentation.

Still, there is only so much that can be done in a day. It isn't because of genies that this is called genealogy. It is not magic we're working when we construct our family trees; it is plenty of grunt work and patience. The Tilson project is likely one I'll need to revisit in my plans for the upcoming year, despite my heroic attempts at finishing the unfinishable today. For tomorrow, we'll be on to another research project featuring a different side of the family.

Keeping on Track With D N A

 

The larger the family tree grows, the more ways we need to organize our approach to systematically research all branches. Unless the goal is to only learn about one surname in the family tree, we face a multiplying spread of unidentified ancestors if we don't develop a system.

For the most part, since I've decided to include research on all collateral lines—in other words, the siblings of each of my direct ancestors—that has become a helpful approach to overcome two potential pitfalls in genealogy. One is the "brick wall" ancestor—that great-great whoever who becomes the roadblock in research progress due to lack of information. The other is that overwhelming dazed sense, in looking at the avalanche of DNA matches and realizing that none of the names look familiar: who are all those people?!

Doing an end run around the brick wall ancestor became far easier, once I learned to look to siblings to unlock the puzzle. Sometimes, it's the kid brother whose life story makes it into the tell-all obituary when older sister's prim and proper generation didn't have much to say at her passing.

It's the DNA approach, however, which took much more effort to snap into shape. I did develop a system to work through all the descendants of collateral lines, so I could pin those DNA matches into my family tree. Let me tell you, when working with large families with many children who do likewise in the next generation, that process, though thorough, can be tedious.

That's why I've developed a second, faster approach to provide information up front as needed. Rather than researching every single line of every sibling in each generation, I've used my DNA matches as my guide. In particular, I'm working with the ThruLines matches at Ancestry.com and the Theory of Family Relativity at MyHeritage. Yes, of course, that leaves big gaps in my tree; I'm only working on those who have tested their DNA and have posted enough of a family tree to grant me a toe-hold on finding our ancestral nexus.

With that process, I'll be taking the next two weeks to double check on family lines which I had long ago meant to complete—namely, the three maternal lines I mentioned in yesterday's post: Broyles, Tilson, and Taliaferro. My starting point will be to examine the ThruLines for those specific ancestral surnames.

Starting that process today, I managed to add seventy more names to my mother's tree, most of them in one day of work. Though my own family tree has languished in the last several months while I focused on my father-in-law's Tully and Flannery lines, the count for my own tree has started to grow. Total count for documented ancestors and related lines is now at 33,977.

Because I had spent so much time working on my father-in-law's lines for the past three months, of course there was much progress there. In the last two weeks, I added 221 more documented individuals to that tree, which now stands at 34,019 names.

As I wrap up the last two weeks of September, and before springing into research on my own father's lines for the last three months of the year, I'll be focusing on the ThruLines results for my Broyles, Taliaferro, and Tilson lines. With each DNA match listed in that program, I'll then work through the documentation to confirm those ThruLines suggestions—or reject them, as sometimes happens, once a problem manifests itself through conflicting records. This can become a multi-generational process for each DNA match, but it can also become a deep and wide procedure, as the research stretches not only from founding immigrant ancestor to present time, but also through each sibling's line of descent over the generations.

Since I've saved way-markers for my more thorough but plodding family-wide sweep through the generations, I'll always be able to return to the places where I left off that process. In the meantime, though, since I have a limited two weeks for this catch-up period, I'll keep on track more quickly by focusing on what the DNA matches show me on specific lines of interest. When that two week test run is completed, I'll take another look at the results and see whether it will be worthwhile to pick three more surnames for this fast-track approach before the year is out.

Friends, Ex-Husbands of Sixth Cousins, and Me

 

So there I was, sitting at my laptop and working on the endless collateral lines descended from the surnames I'd been researching earlier this year—names like Broyles and Tilson, with deep roots in this country's colonial history. My self-imposed assignment was to trace each line of descent to the present day for the benefit of placing my thousands of unknown DNA cousins on their proper branch of my family tree.

Working on one family's extensive line, I made it down to the level of my sixth cousin—a suitable stopping place, since the likelihood of two sixth cousins sharing DNA can drop below the two percent mark, depending on which company you choose for your autosomal test. But I'm a greedy researcher, and my mantra sometimes becomes, "Just one more." I wanted to find the next generation for this one particular, married sixth cousin.

In the process of searching for an obituary—those tell-all documents which have become research necessities for those of us smitten with the genealogy bug—I discovered a few things. I found the coveted names of the next generation, alright, but I also discovered the sixth cousin's spouse was actually an ex-husband. Who had remarried. With a spouse whose name sounded vaguely familiar—and triggered a volley of hints on my online tree at Ancestry.com.

One of those hints was for a listing of all other Ancestry subscribers who also have that name entered in their family tree. One of those trees happened to belong to a friend of mine.

I messaged that friend to ask just how she might be related to that wife of my sixth cousin's ex-husband.

"She's my sister," came the reply.

You know we had to get together for coffee and to compare notes. After all, it isn't every day that we genies bump into friends with connections to the ex-husband of our sixth cousin.

Come to think of it, it isn't often that we even meet anyone who could follow a relationship like the one I just described in that last sentence, let alone name that person.

What a uniquely-organized world we've plotted on our digital family trees, with tools which would seem to be no more than science fiction to the ancestors whose names populate the boxes in our pedigree chart. Our research world has exploded with possibilities. The time it takes to solve a genealogical riddle has shrunken. And the closest route to a sixth cousin can be a distance as short as the span of the table between me and the friend with whom I'm sharing a chuckle over a morning's cup of coffee.  

More Month Than Material

 

Sometimes, a month like March can seem a very long period of time. When combined with a research plan like my one-topic-a-month Twelve Most Wanted, sometimes I find myself left with more month than material to talk about.

This month, the plan was to examine the Tilson family, among whose ancestors was a maternal line branching off to connect with the close descendants of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of Mayflower fame. My goal, of course, is to assemble an appropriate paper trail to document the connection from my immediate family—several of whom really want to become members of the Mayflower Society—all the way to those very Mayflower passengers.

Depending on what I've found along the way this month, for my research goal, I either can piggy-back on the membership application of some specific distant cousins of mine—including their reliance on Mercer Vernon Tilson's book, The Tilson Genealogy—or come up with some impossible-to-find documents. All that's left to do is construct the tree plus verification on my side of the family and see what happens when I submit the application.

In the meantime, I've been working my way through The Tilson Genealogy for yet another reason: to see where my many Tilson DNA matches fit into the family tree. I've got that process nailed down to an exact system. Starting with the eldest sibling of my Tilson ancestor, I document what I can about that Tilson sibling's own identity, then move down that line step by step from his oldest child to youngest child, then down through the generations on that line until I reach current day relatives and hopefully identify each Tilson DNA match in that line. Then, it's on to the next sibling of the Tilson ancestor and a repeat process through the ages for that second collateral line.

Needless to say, such drudge work does not yield not good material for scintillating family history stories. As I did for my previous research goals—the Broyles and Taliaferro families—I will move this project from the month's featured effort to continue the work in the background.

In the meantime, though it's a week before schedule, we'll move on to tackle next month's research goal early. Tomorrow, we'll step from working on my mother's ancestors to begin research on three of my mother-in-law's ancestors from those early years of the 1800s.

Tilson Surname Origin

 

While some people spring for a DNA test simply out of curiosity over what ethnicities might show up in their test results, that has never been my case. Yes, I already have a fairly clear idea of the places my ancestors left to migrate to North America. But when I remember that my Broyles family, for instance, came over from Germany in the early 1700s, I can hardly use that fact to think of myself as German-American. Three hundred years can do a lot to shift one's allegiances.

With that in mind, though I've spent the bulk of this month focusing on my Tilson roots, I hadn't given one thought to the origin of that surname—until, that is, I started working on my Tilson DNA matches. 

For each match showing on my ThruLines results at Ancestry.com, I've constructed the line of descent from the most recent common ancestor we share, adding documentation to my database as I go. One particular DNA match led me on a different path. Unlike the many Tilsons I've already researched, all clustering in northeastern Tennessee, this particular family line left Tennessee to apply for a land grant in western Canada.

If you have ever researched Canadian ancestors, while we use many of the same documents for such a search, the contents of the records are sometimes different. For instance, the Canadian census records have included questions, for instance, on the family's religious preference, or on their ethnic identity.

In following this migrating Tilson line, it was their answers to the Canadian enumeration which surprised me, not so much because of the answers themselves, but because I had never given much thought as to what religion the Tilsons might have claimed, and even more so, with what ethnic origin they identified.

In this particular Tilson emigrant family's case, the answers indicated that the family considered themselves to be of Scottish origin, and thus it was no surprise to see them claim Presbyterian affiliation. How did I miss picking up these details in all my years of (figuratively) tromping through the wilderness of southwest Virginia, trying in vain to locate the Tilsons in local records?

I went exploring to see if there was any resonance in other resources. First to the Mercer Vernon Tilson book, I searched for the term Scotland, and found only the slightest reference: "The name 'Tilson' has long been known in England, Scotland and Ireland."

Not much help there. How about using a surname distribution map? Not better there: while the top eight countries for incidence of the Tilson surname are mostly England and its former colonies, while Wales and Northern Ireland were listed separately, there was no mention of Scotland.

I checked out Ancestry.com's page for the Tilson surname. Scrolling down the page to the gray-scale map readout labeled, "Where is the Tilson family from?" I selected Scotland for the location and clicked through each decade on the timeline. Reading the legend told me that there were precious few Tilsons in Scotland at any time from the earliest date given—1841—through the readout's final decade in 1901.

It doesn't seem like there were many Tilsons from Scotland at all, judging from those sources. So where did this Tilson family, recently arrived in Canada, come up with the notion that their roots were from Scotland?

Thinking that question over leads me to realize a few things we need to keep in mind when we research our family's roots. First, the report in the Canadian census was based—at least, presumably—on answers provided by the family themselves. What if the specific reporting party was actually a Tilson in-law who was giving an answer from his or her own point of view? Sometimes family members in such situations don't really know the correct answer, especially for the other side of the family.

Even when details are recorded in government documents, the official could have heard the answer incorrectly, or the original document could have been transcribed incorrectly. I am wondering whether that is the case in another Tilson puzzle—Peter or Peleg in land transactions—and believe that to be a more common occurrence than we think.

But in some cases, perhaps the person giving the answer hadn't expected such a question to even be asked. How many times do we blurt out an answer because the question was one we didn't even expect? That immigrant family in Canada was probably accustomed to the types of questions posed in a United States enumeration and wouldn't have given a thought to their origin if not asked. After all, this Tilson line arrived in New England sometime before 1640. How would they see themselves, well over two hundred years later?

Unexpected realizations like this, springing up as we progress through our work, can remind us of the assumptions we carry with us on this research journey. Little surprises—and the self-reflections that come with them—can guide us in formulating further questions, and broadening our search.

 

 

Remembering When I First Started

 

Sometimes, it is good to recall our motivations for starting a project in the first place. After working so long on something, we can lose sight of our original inspiration. I need to pay attention to that first glimmer when I discovered the 1911 Tilson Genealogy. I think I've lost it in all the wanderings among generations of repeated names.

It's been quite a long time since I first heard that this Tilson family might lead me back to Mayflower roots. Years after hearing that, I discovered Mercer Vernon Tilson's tome on that same family line. After finding my ancestors in its pages—even down to Thomas Davis, my second great-grandfather—I was fascinated to see how all these relatives fit into the same family.

By then, I had already become familiar with genealogy databases, both desktop-resident Family Tree Maker and online Ancestry.com, so I knew I had the tools to check out the work done by Mercer Vernon Tilson over one hundred years earlier.

That is how I got started. I'd enter specific information from the Tilson book into my closely related lines, then turn to Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org to locate records to verify the author's assertions. Everything I checked back then seemed to be well verified—until I got farther back in time to those early Virginia settlers who crossed that 1763 line of demarcation. That's where I couldn't verify the book's claims without really digging in to some source documents. Those, unfortunately, were out of my reach at the time.

Now that I'm back, tackling the project after a long hiatus—hint: pre-pandemic—the fine-toothed comb method is picking up some glaring errors. Perhaps I wouldn't have realized that, if it weren't for the addition of another motivation to re-ignite my original spark of inspiration: DNA matches. As I work through my Tilson matches—remember, I have thirty eight of them to verify—I'm spotting those glaring discrepancies.

Granted, the other tool in hand besides the Tilson Genealogy is Ancestry's ThruLines, a mostly useful program which is limited only by the soundness of the family trees upon which it is partially based. After yesterday's mis-matched discovery, I examined two other Tilson DNA matches, and found either a disagreement with the Tilson book or with actual documentation.

What that means for my tree is simply that, as I proceed with the Tilson book, I need to confirm every step of the way with solid documentation. Perhaps, with the DNA matches, I can share my discoveries with my newfound DNA cousin, but I also have learned that not everyone appreciates a chirpy message about how wrong their tree is, even if the message is only to suggest that the wrong identity was assigned to another Tilson with the same given name.

Producing a published genealogy like the Tilson Genealogy must have been a monumental undertaking when it was first proposed in the early years of the last century. We are blessed with so many tools at our fingertips to speed up the process now. But back then, you could almost see the project run out of steam as it approached some of the more recent generations of the Tilson lines of descent.

When I first started exploring the Tilson Genealogy, my dream was to use the computer tools we now have at hand to verify the information stored in that 1911 edition. It is possible, although an exhausting process. I may never fully accomplish such an undertaking—and I have run across other researchers who seem to have the same type of goal—but the idea has been re-ignited in my mind. At least for my own lines of descent, and for those of my Tilson DNA cousins, I'd like to see that project reach completion. Who knows? Perhaps a family association has already taken on that same idea.

Tiptoeing Through the Tilsons

 

With yesterday's discovery of additional Mayflower Society resources, it would seem my research task for the month of March is already completed. All that's left would be to complete the membership application, right?

Not so fast. There may be a few tangles to straighten out in that Tilson line. Here's what happened next. Remembering that I had several DNA matches with other Tilson descendants—thirty eight, to be exact—I thought I'd use the rest of the month to straighten out my own database. After all, collateral lines can be important. In the case of this Tilson family, as it turns out, collateral lines may be our only hope for making sure we have the right Thomas Tilson...or William Tilson...or even Peleg Tilson. This Tilson line is a tangled bunch of namesakes.

That point was made clear once again as I explored my DNA matches at Ancestry's ThruLines. I was working my way through my matches who descend from Thomas Tilson, brother of my fourth great-grandfather Peleg Tilson. According to Mercer Vernon Tilson's Tilson Genealogy, this Thomas was born July 15 1767, and married Eunice Hubbell.

Their daughter Rachel—another name frequently seen in this family's genealogy—happened to be listed in the ancestry of one particular DNA match in my ThruLines results at Ancestry.com. While I had this Rachel marrying a man named Thomas Copenhaver, my DNA match's line showed someone by another surname listed for Rachel's son.

Since I only had one husband listed for this Rachel, I came to the brilliant conclusion that something was wrong here. However, realizing the Tilson proclivity to name their children after favorite ancestors, I checked my tree to see if I had recorded another Rachel married to the alternate name, Tapp.

Sure enough, there was one. This other Rachel I found in my database also had a father named Thomas, but her mother was listed as Jennet (and alternately, Jennie) Tilson. Jennet, herself a Tilson, was listed as daughter of Peleg, Thomas' brother. Do you see how this line is circling around?

I happened to notice that this other Thomas Tilson, husband of the other Rachel's mother Jennet, was himself son of someone named Thomas. And that father Thomas, husband of Polly Reynolds, was listed in the Tilson Genealogy as having been born on July 15, 1767.

But wait! I thought Thomas, husband of Eunice and father of the other Rachel, was born on July 15, 1767, too. They couldn't be birthday twins, could they?

While I was able to document the line clearly from my DNA match's ancestor—the other Thomas Tilson, husband of Jennet—I'm still tiptoeing my way through the various lines to see just where this other Thomas actually fits in. And that brings up one additional question: what if Mercer Vernon Tilson got it wrong? If that is possible, then I'm still back at square one, trying to document the connections between my own ancestors and the Tilson line. After all, if there's one mistake, it is possible that there are others. What is needed here, as always, is documentation to clear up any confusion and settle the questions.     

Where Cumulative Learning Comes In

 

So, what does cumulative learning have to do with genealogy? Don't let the big words scare you. If you've ever heard folk sayings like "inch by inch, anything's a cinch," or "don't run before you can walk," you are hearing the basics of cumulative learning. Big concepts are built from smaller ideas. The steps we've already taken can point the way to next steps. When we find a way to understand the smaller building blocks first, we can piece them together to better get our head around those big ideas.

Right now, I'm grappling with the big idea of how I'm going to manage applying for membership in the Mayflower Society. It's fairly obvious there are big gaps in the necessary documentation to demonstrate a clear line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins to the members of my immediate family—and that's a problem. There are books and blog posts saying there is a connection, but a big gap in record-keeping in the murky middle of this genealogical journey has me wondering what to do next.

After purchasing the file of supporting documents for the application of a third cousin to the Daughters of the American Revolution—like me, a descendant of William "Tillson" through his son Peleg Tilson—I was dismayed to see very little references other than a few published genealogies to fill in the gaps in that paper chain of documentation. It seems to me that more actual records—coupled, at the very least with a solid proof argument—would be expected by an organization like the Mayflower Society.

Fortunately—and this is where the cumulative learning comes in—I remembered something from my Broyles research project in January. That something was the discovery of a recently-published book. That book, The Broyles Family: The First Four Generations, had been long overdue, a planned update by the Germanna Foundation which had been delayed by several factors.

Thinking of that, I remembered that somewhere I had read about the Mayflower Society also having plans to update their "Silver Books" and—possibly—add information beyond the first five generations. The key detail regarding those Silver Books is that each line of descent up through those five generations has been carefully vetted by respected professional genealogists. Applicants only need demonstrate direct relationship with that fifth generation, rather than having to document the entire way back to a Mayflower passenger.

Straight to Google I went, trying to find where I had read that detail about the Silver Books. I sure could use a confirmed line of descent stretching further than five generations. I found the answer easily: it was through Heather Wilkinson Rojo's blog, Nutfield Genealogy, where she posted news of a Silver Book Project Update in the fall of 2021. Reading the article once again, I noticed Heather included a further update at the end of last year. Apparently, the index may be out "within the next year" and "the books are all in progress."

Doesn't seem like any time soon.

The virtue of posing such questions as mine to Google is that there is always more than one answer. Studying all the search results led me on a tour of the history of the Mayflower Society's Silver Book projects. Apparently, the books have a long history from conception of the idea to precursor publications in the 1920s and 1930s up through 1956. The first volume of the five-generation concept was due to be published in 1970, but like many such enormous undertakings, suffered delays, making its ultimate appearance in 1975. In 2013—more to my current purposes—the Society endorsed a name change as it expands from the five-generation format to include subsequent generations in future publications.

Indeed, the Society's goal is "to provide clear, well-documented lineages of the ship's passengers through the seventh and eighth generations." That would clearly be of help to me. But when?

My journey through Google's possibilities didn't stop there, though. For a mere $60, the specific Project volume on my ancestor, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins' daughter Elizabeth, could be shipped to my door. But wait! Google had more to say on the topic.

Even better—though old news now—among the events included in the year-long 2020 celebration of Mayflower's four hundredth anniversary was an announcement at that year's RootsTech of the collaboration between the Mayflower Society, American Ancestors, and FamilySearch.org to make available online what is being called the Mayflower Database.

The database contains material from the thirty volume set of the five-generation project plus member applications submitted from as early as 1896, with information provided through 1910 on applications submitted as recently as 2019.

Sure enough, there is a "Mayflower Descendants Search" page at FamilySearch.org. I decided to test it out by entering William Tillson, the same name (and spelling) I had used yesterday to research the Tilson Patriot at the D.A.R. website. And there he was in the new display at FamilySearch.org, showing William Tilson's tree connecting all the way through to the Mayflower passengers I had anticipated. Better yet, the tree stretched in the other direction as well, showing me the lines of descent which included successful Mayflower Society applicants descending from Peleg Tilson's line.

Following that line of descent led me through two more generations of my direct ancestors, then branched off to a collateral line. After having studied the D.A.R. application yesterday for my third cousin's paperwork, I recognized that Mayflower line as the same one I had been reviewing yesterday from the D.A.R. application.

If the Mayflower Society handles their membership applications the same way D.A.R. does, that may mean I only have to provide verification of my connecting line up to the point of Thomas D. Davis, my second great-grandfather. How's that for a step-by-step process?  

   

An Obvious Option

 

If we are stuck trying to find the origin and dates of ancestor William Tilson, but then discover the man served in the American Revolution, the obvious next research option is to see whether he is listed as a Patriot at the D.A.R. website.

Sure enough, William did have a listing on the D.A.R. website—with the minor revision of an additional "l" tacked on to his surname. The D.A.R. entry showed William Tillson born in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, in 1741, the same year as the Tilson Genealogy had told us.

According to the D.A.R. file, William was listed as having provided "patriotic service" in Virginia by paying a "supply tax" in 1783. The source of that information was listed as having come from a microfilm at the Library of Virginia regarding Washington County personal property taxes. (Fortunately, that same collection is currently available through FamilySearch.org.)

There was a long list of D.A.R. members who had applied for membership on account of their descent from William Tillson. The D.A.R. website sorted the listings according to the specific child of William Tillson whom each member claimed as ancestor. Included in that long list were a few descendants of Peleg, William's son whom I also claim as my fourth great-grandfather.

As I looked over the D.A.R. list, I realized that one of the descendants of Peleg Tilson was a third cousin whom I had met online during the early days of genealogy forums. Since it is possible to purchase a copy of the application and supporting documentation (with information on living people redacted), I decided to take a look at her file.

Thankfully, the purchased file walked me through document after document tracing the way from this distant cousin back through several generations. All the documents you would expect were either copied onto the file or cited in the application. Census records, obituaries, marriage licenses—all the expected paperwork, including copies of family Bible entries—walked me back, generation by generation, until the point of Peleg's daughter Rachel's marriage to James Davis. And then, the litany of records stopped.

Of course, I had most of those records already copied into my own tree. After all, those are the types of documents which we all appreciate finding at Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Digitized documents rock. But what about the details beyond that point? That's what I was purchasing the D.A.R. file to find.

There were other resources listed, of course. Just not what I had hoped for. Handwritten notes, most likely added by a local D.A.R. registrar, named two books as resources to guide those making a membership decision. One of the books was a 1981 publication by Pat Alderman called Tilson Grist Mill. The other was a reference book which has become stock in trade for those of us researching our Tilson roots: Mercer Vernon Tilson's The Tilson Genealogy.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose. But I had hoped for more guidance on just how writers like Mercer Vernon Tilson had pieced together the story on this family line. After all, his claim is that William Tilson can trace his heritage back to some of the travelers on the Mayflower. Depending on how strict the Mayflower folks are regarding documentation for membership in their organization, pointing to a book—even a book published over one hundred years ago—may not be enough to satisfy. 

Fun, Florida, and Family History

 

I wasn't sure what two weeks of travel would do to my customary biweekly progress report. While visiting family might seem to occupy the same category as recording family history, it is an entirely different type of event. I didn't think I had recorded as many details on my family tree as I hoped. After all, growing relationships isn't quite the same as growing a family tree.

This past week, traveling in Florida, was our first opportunity to meet some great-nephews—now teenagers!—as well as to deliver early birthday wishes to a cousin turning ninety. Added to the whirlwind tour was the chance to visit a newlywed niece and her husband and be one of the first to hear the news about an upcoming addition to the extended family (it's a boy!).

In the midst of all that activity—and miles on the road—just how much family history research progress could one make? Actually, the past two weeks fared quite well, considering.

Since this month is my last month to research ancestors on my mother's side of the family, my tree became the sole focus, even though the majority of the time spent in Florida was devoted to my in-laws' family. I was surprised at that, but the numbers bear me out: not a single name was added to my in-laws' tree. Just wonderful memories of spending time with the extended family during their spring break from work and school.

As for my mother's Tilson, Taliaferro, and Broyles lines, the ones I've been working on for the first quarter of this research year, I managed to add 181 individuals to her tree. Not as many as I usually add in any given biweekly period, but it was a nice surprise to see I had made that much progress. My tree now includes documentation on 32,923 relatives.

With my next biweekly report, I'll close out this year's focus on my maternal line and we'll shift to researching my mother-in-law's family. The numbers will most certainly show that shift quite graphically, as her ancestral Catholic heritage in this country meant many large families appearing in ample documentation. Hopefully, the tasks laid out for my springtime research goals will yield more of the same, though it is always hard to predict what a research question will yield.

In the meantime, I have two more weeks to wrestle with my mother's Tilson line. I have a couple more resources lined up to discuss this coming week, including a review of all my Tilson DNA matches at Ancestry.com's ThruLines. Hopefully these resources will reveal the information I've been seeking. One never knows, being the genealogy guinea pig, how any research adventure will turn out, but I'm always open to give any question my best try.

William Tilson in Virginia: When and Where?

 

We've found a claim that William Tilson, despite already having been given land in Massachusetts, had settled in Virginia by 1763. That claim, as we've seen, may have run contradictory to the rules and regulations of the colonial jurisdiction in which he lived. With so many snippets of history hinting that the Tilson claim couldn't have been possible, are there any other signs to counterbalance that assertion gone awry?

I poked around the Internet, thanks to a little guidance from Google, to see if I could find further information. From a newspaper article introducing a reference book on land grants after the French and Indian War—Bounty and Donation Land Grants in British Colonial America, written by Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck—I learned a few key details.

One was that the king of England had authorized colonial governors to issue grants for bounty lands to those participating in the French and Indian War, with the amount of the land awarded based on the rank of the person serving. While the Proclamation of 1763 limited governors as to the location of land granted, there was none so limited as the governor of Massachusetts Colony; in Massachusetts, there was no land available to be awarded within their own borders.

In order to receive such an award, an eligible person needed first to apply. The resultant paperwork thus could reveal to a researcher not only that an ancestor received such a grant, but what rank was held by that ancestor, which colony he served for, which military engagements he was part of, and the size and location of the land he received.

Presumably, the paperwork would also provide us with some dates. After all, I'm trying to ascertain whether the William Tilson who lived in southwest Virginia was one and the same as the grandson mentioned in the Massachusetts will of John Murdock. And I've found some roadblocks to a clear understanding and confidence that the William in Massachusetts would be one and the same as the William in Virginia.

We already can see from the 1810 census that there was indeed a William Tilson living in Washington County, Virginia. In fact, the names surrounding his entry on that enumeration point to possible family members and other associates: Sampson Cole, likely namesake of William's grandson born that very year; "Hellin Dungans" and Levi Bishop, mentioned as grantees in the 1797 land record we've already examined; and probable sons Thomas and "Lamuel" Tilson. Despite any squabbles over transcription problems in the 1797 land record, other tax records showed that someone named William Tilson was already paying taxes in Washington County, Virginia, by that date.

 

But when we rewind history to those more messy years, I don't find any land records. What I do find, again from history records, is another warning in the guise of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. That agreement sought to revise the colonial boundary line previously established in the 1763 Royal Proclamation. With the later treaty, some of the land previously excluded from colonial settlement was now open for claims to the bounty lands promised after the war. So, could William Tilson have settled in southwest Virginia by 1768?

Complicating matters was that the process for obtaining the requisite certificate showing proof of military service was apparently bogged down in its own red tape. Some certificates were issued by 1774—at least, those in Virginia—but some were not provided until issued by Virginia county courts in 1779 or later.

Granted, the push to revise the former treaty was a slow and messy process. In addition, history already indicates that some land speculators as well as settlers already had exercised their claim to land which was subsequently impacted by the Royal Proclamation.

Could William Tilson have been among such settlers? Hard to say, at this point. But whether he barged right in and took up residence at the first chance in 1763, waited until 1768—or even later—we do have another chance to track William's whereabouts and family connections: his service in the Revolutionary War. We'll examine what can be found of that subsequent military service next week.

 

Image above: Excerpt from Personal Property Tax Lists of Washington County, Virginia, 1782-1850, for 1797 entry for William Tilson; digitized image courtesy FamilySearch.org.