Learning About the Katy

 

If it weren't for the consistent pursuit of my family's story over the generations, I doubt I would have learned as much about history as I have. Add to that geography, economics, and human hopes and dreams, fulfilled or dashed. Learning about the life of others in the family eventually means learning about Life, itself.

With the last of my research goals abandoned for lack of material allowing me to continue that track, I'll be dedicating the upcoming two weeks to reviewing the loose ends left behind from previous months' goals. First on my list is a review of DNA matches in my ThruLines results for the Broyles family line. While that may seem a simple assignment, I hardly expected I'd be learning about a train line with a claim to fame of going against the grain. This is what I learned about the railroad line known, over a century ago, as "the Katy."

Apparently, unlike other lines known for shipping goods and passengers across the continent, connecting east and west, the Katy was part of a company which became known as the first railroad to enter Texas from the north. The "unconventional north-south network" of the Kansas-Texas division (the K-T, or "Katy" for short) of the Missouri Pacific Railroad owed its roots to a formation designed to build a supply network connecting frontier military posts in the midwest with port cities in the south. The dream was to eventually expand to a rail system stretching from Chicago to New Orleans.

Before 1870, the U.S. Congress had passed acts promising land grants to the first railroad to complete a route through the Neosho Valley to the Kansas border. Though the Katy line was the first to do so, they never received the promised land due to other restraints. However, the company continued its push southward, completing a route to the Texas border by 1872, and incrementally beyond that to several other Texas cities by the early 1900s.

All this I would never have known, had it not been for a newspaper report involving one of my Broyles line DNA matches' ancestors. On Friday evening, July 12, 1907, the Parsons, Kansas, Daily Eclipse carried the story:

Second section of Katy freight No. 414 went into a weakened culvert about three-quarters of a mile north of Colbert yesterday morning about 5:10 as a result of which the entire crew of five men were more or less injured, one very seriously.

Despite the seemingly offhand comment, "more or less," reading beyond the first paragraph did indeed spell out the story more clearly. The train was "running light"—consisting of only the engine and caboose—and had just passed Colbert in what was then "Indian Territory." The conductor had just received a "slow order" regarding two approaching bridges upon which construction work had recently been done. The train safely crossed the first. However, in attempting to slowly cross the second, after the engine cleared the area, the construction gave way, leaving the caboose crashing down almost on end.

It was there in that falling train car that brakeman Horace Maxwell Rolater was thrown to the floor of the caboose, knocked unconscious as the fall fractured his skull and caused internal injuries. By July 17, the next edition of the weekly Parsons newspaper reported that Rolater had died the evening of the day following the crash. By then, he had undergone surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain in hopes that would improve his chances of survival. He never regained consciousness.

Horace's father, who lived in Oklahoma, was present at the time of his passing. Not much else was said about the man who lost his life due to construction issues along the route he took that last work day. The newspaper did mention that Horace left a wife and two children—a boy and a girl—but they remained nameless. The only other comment provided by the article was that it was believed Horace Rolater was not a member of any Brotherhood or fraternal order, most likely meaning that there would be no help in providing his funeral and burial expenses—a hard burden for a young widow to bear unexpectedly.

While Horace Rolater was not anyone my family knew personally—he would have been my grandmother's third cousin—stories like this implore me to look further. Of course, you know there had to be more to this story, for the only reason I found it was because one of my DNA matches is a descendant of one of Horace Rolater's children.

Those children were indeed quite young when they lost their father—a devastating thought to consider, never mind live through. Horace's son was not quite five years old—an age in which a missing father might not be much more than a fuzzy memory. His daughter, still only one year old, would likely only have experienced the sudden sadness enveloping the home, not actually remembered the father she had lost.

Stories such as this are ones which cause us to stop and consider, no matter how far removed we are from the actual relative. They belong to the life history of another branch of the family, true, but they also belong to the tapestry of what makes our extended family what it is, even now. They remind me how important it is to capture those memories for the others who share those roots with us. They are all part of our fabric of life.

 

  

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.

Looking Back

 

One problem with plans is that they always seem to point our attention to the future. Sometimes, we need to reserve time for looking back.

Take my current annual plan for family history research, which I call my Twelve Most Wanted. Each month, I set aside time to focus on researching one ancestor. Along with some specific research goals—usually questions arising from what I was unable to resolve the last time I tackled that ancestor's story—the goal was to push forward, er, backwards in time enough to be within sight of the preceding generation's details.

Usually, such plans meant I had far more to do in one month than I calculated during my annual planning session during that dreamy time between Christmas and Epiphany. I generally left each month with a to-do list to get me started for the next time I visited that research topic. This month, unfortunately, has not been quite the same. And, as I look at the topics I've selected for the final quarter of this year, I realize I may be up against the same dilemma for each of the next three months, as well.

What to do with the extra time? After all, we were only halfway through this month when I realized there is very little more that I can devote to the Tully and Flannery lines, despite all the additional time remaining.

That's when I realized the problem with goals: they always push us forward. What is needed is to fold in a regular time of review, a feedback loop, of looking backward at what's already been accomplished, to see whether any additional adjustments need to be made.

For instance, during each month's iteration of the Twelve Most Wanted, behind the scenes I am churning out a corollary goal: document the lines of descent for that particular ancestor. This I do for purposes of connecting DNA matches to my family tree, but it takes time to complete each line. Sometimes, by the end of the month, I mark my stopping point with the best of intentions to return to the task. Often, those markers lay neglected where I parked them at the close of that month's research effort.

This reminds me that, inside any research plan, time should be allotted for returning to review progress on old goals. Checking to see whether anything else could be added, or any loose ends tied up, should become part of the routine as I move through each month's research goal.

I certainly have a lot of incomplete goals to revisit. Remember that unfinished business on my Tilson line? I'm still working on adding all the descendants of my fourth great-grandfather, Peleg Tilson. The same could be said about the cousins in my Broyles line, about whom someone asked me just the other day. And, of course, my Taliaferro line—which reaches even farther back into the colonial history of this country—needs continued attention, as well. And these were only the first three months' worth of this year's research plans. There is far more yet to review.

I think it is safe to say there is plenty to review before Ancestor #10 gets released for the upcoming month's project. Let's take the upcoming two weeks to revisit these three ancestors from the beginning of the year to see how progress has fared.

Pet Peeve

 

For the past several days, I've been mulling over the options regarding my latest research dilemma. While I had so carefully laid out my research plans for the entire year—my Twelve Most Wanted, a plan set at the beginning of January—this month with my father-in-law's Tully line, I find myself running short of plan. With half a month yet to go, I have absolutely no further material to help me find answers. And that dilemma—reaching all the brick wall ancestors in each family line—is becoming my latest pet peeve, as we'll see as we launch into the goals for the last quarter of this year.

While casting about for a viable alternative approach, I returned to my trees at Ancestry.com to snag screen shots of the fan view beta option which recently popped up on my account. What should greet my bleary eyes upon pulling up the site again but a screaming green banner announcing, "Know Your Pet DNA by Ancestry is here."

Now, before you jump on the bandwagon headed in either direction—yay or nay—let me share a little story. 

It was years ago when I first tried talking one of my paternal cousins into springing for a DNA test. I was particularly stuck on my father's line—a perennial complaint of mine, thanks to my grandfather's silence about his true roots—and hoped that having another DNA participant on my father's side might help.

My cousin had plenty of questions, which I was careful to address. I was beginning to feel worthy of being sainted for my patience—or at least worthy of a sale on my proposal to have her test—when she suddenly confessed that she actually knew quite a bit about genetic genealogy.

The only difference between what she knew and what I knew? She did her testing on horses. She was a horse breeder, and DNA testing was an important way to verify that the right family lines were involved in the pedigree.

I've since heard similar stories from people who are dog breeders, as well. We think of DNA as the domain of our own genealogical endeavors, but DNA testing is apparently something used in a number of domains.

Thus, when Ancestry introduced their own DNA tests for pets this week, I wasn't surprised. There are many people who care very much for their pet, perhaps seeing that pet more as part of their family than simply an animal companion living in the same house. I'm curious to see how this offering resonates with the current market, though. Verifying a purebred line for which a customer may have paid highly is one thing; curiosity about the roots of a pet rescued from the pound may not be as compelling. I think seeing how this product fares may be more revealing about us as a culture than it will be about the pet for whom we laid down the purchase price.

Rather than stare at the neon green ribbon across my computer screen, though, I hope the anticipated big change heralded on a banner on the DNA page (for humans, that is) will live up to its hype. "Even more precision in the coming weeks" hopefully wasn't delayed due to this other product launch. I'd much rather have more information on my father's mysterious roots than know that Fido was merely a mongrel, after all.

Release Your Research Skills Out Into the Wilds

 

After years of enjoying the speedy success of researching our roots using the commercial entities I sometimes refer to as genealogy "big box" stores, it seems our research muscles are atrophying. With the "easy" family history details which show up regularly in computer-searchable census enumerations and other digitized vital records, we forget how to release our research skills out into the wilds and wildernesses of real life paper. This week brought an occasion to reacquaint myself with the fact that there are plenty of resources out there which are not locked away in the computer world of genealogy city lights and subdivisions.

Like many other groups, our local genealogy organization coordinates what we call "Special Interest Groups." These are smaller circles of members who get together to focus on one particular aspect of our family history research. We are probably the only society outside the state of Tennessee which hosts a Tennessee Special Interest Group, but that's just a research interest several of us share.

This week was our monthly gathering and, as usual, the conversation was lively. Several of us are researching the historic Washington County, and one member had brought several photocopies of pages from a book she had found years ago. The book, unimaginatively entitled History of Washington County, Tennessee, contained biographical sketches of several of this member's ancestral families.

The question was: how to locate a copy of this book once again? This member had only stumbled upon it year ago at a library while visiting a friend in Southern California. Since that is a trip of over three hundred miles, she was not likely to return, simply to look at the book once again.

I thought I'd try my hand at helping her locate another copy. My first stop: Internet Archive, where both staff and volunteers have uploaded an impressive amount of written material over the years—but there was no result for my search there. Taking the cue from the location of the library where the woman had first found the book, I went to the library's online catalog to see if the book was still in circulation there. It was—a good sign.

Confirming the book's title, and now from the catalog also gleaning the date of publication and name of the authors, I had more details to lead me toward the next step in my adventure. The "authors" turned out to be a genealogical organization back in the area of current-day Washington County called the Watauga Association of Genealogists. I found an online entry explaining the history of the group. Then I headed to the Association's own website to see whether they still sold a version of their book, since it was published in 1988—not quite to the point of being in public domain, but hopefully not too long since their last printing—but they did not.

Next step in the exploration: check to see which libraries closer to home might have the book in their collection. Enter WorldCat.org to discover that a Family History Library nearby did indeed have a copy of the book.

That, however, was not all. WorldCat also pointed me to other books with similar titles. I realized I might as well make note of these other potential resources for our Washington County research, so I saved that listing as well. One of the books on this topic was a more recent publication, and while I thought I'd be interested in buying that one, sticker shock prevented me.

Meanwhile, since another topic in our Tennessee meeting was the family photos shared in those ubiquitous "Images of America" books, I promised to bring what I thought was my copy of the Washington County book published by the printer, Arcadia Publishing. However, I was mistaken; instead, I had their book, Erwin and Unicoi County. Close, but not the same location. So I went to Arcadia Publishing's own website and looked up all the titles they offer on Tennessee topics. There are pages and pages of resources—even more books to follow up on, check reviews, and possibly purchase.

The conversation in our meeting moved next to resources for finding old letters, journals, and other memorabilia from bygone years in Tennessee. Archives were a main topic—and another one which nudges us off the grid of big-box genealogy subdivisions into the wilds of our own exploration. There can be lots to find in these off-the-beaten-path resources for historic material. Using ArchiveGrid or the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) at the U.S. Library of Congress may—if you're lucky to have the right ancestors and the knack of finding usable material—lead to more information on your family.

After our meeting, I realized it felt good to flex those research muscles and go outside the box and off the grid to search for material I was seeking on my family's roots. There is plenty of material out there. It just takes far more persistence and know-how than simply sitting at a computer being spoon fed "hints" from a subscription service. Yes, these are the wilds of genealogical research, but sometimes we need to feed that sense of research adventure and strike out on our own.

A Pause in the Interim

 

While I am casting about for a new topic to research in the short period leading up to writing next month's goal, I had a thought I'd like to share. Perhaps, in this interim, you might have some thoughts on the same situation—in which case, I'd love to hear them.

I often reflect on the state of local genealogical societies, especially considering what is to become of these small but vital groups. It may seem that "big box" commercial entities have become the be-all, end-all which are swallowing up these small organizations. After all, there is so much that can be obtained online to support building that family tree. Why need a local group? Where can such a small group fill in the gaps?

Of course, if you've been reading here at A Family Tapestry for any amount of time, you know I'm a strong supporter of local genealogical groups. Perhaps it took coming through a devastating pandemic to open my eyes to exactly why local groups are needed, but to me it is crystal clear that we in local organizations provide the human element. We are the ones filling in the gaps where people want feedback—someone else to rejoice with us in our research victories, cry at our losses, come alongside us when we are all tackling a new research challenge.

There is, however, a glitch in all this celebration of local societies. And I can best describe that with a story. 

In our local group, which only weathered the pandemic through the help of online meeting technology—hello, Zoom!—we have nonetheless had other organizational problems. Not the least of these has been the difficulty finding anyone willing to step up and volunteer to be part of leadership on our board of directors.

As we have turned our attention back to in-person meetings in the last several months—a move warmly received by our membership—we tried a new type of meeting. This one, called simply "Coffee and Conversation," is a monthly chance to get together and just talk genealogy. No agenda. Membership-driven topics of discussion. Free flow of sharing ideas, resources, and crowdsourced problem-solving. An hour that lets our members shine without pressure of preparing presentations.

This past month, the topic turned to finding old high school yearbooks. One member mentioned that he had found a copy of his school's yearbook for his year of graduation, which inspired him to put his research skills to work discovering what had became of all his former teachers.

"What year?" someone in the crowd asked. "Fifty nine" was the reply.

Another member fist-bumped the man who graduated in fifty nine. Another one said he beat them both by two years. "Fifty seven!" Meanwhile, the woman sitting next to me said, almost to herself, "Fifty five."

It was interesting to listen to the group share their remembrances of the "good old days"—especially when it came to local history—but one thought was not lost on me. These are members of a group meeting in 2023—a group which is having trouble finding candidates to run for officers in our board for the year 2024. 

Yes, I did the math. And the numbers opened my mind. Our members have been there, "done that," for decades. They've served on the hospitality committee, or as newsletter editor, or even as president. Again and again, in many cases. And next year, they are not the ones we need to look to when it comes to filling the positions which will lead our organization into the future.

The people we need for those spots are the ones who weren't even born in 1955, let alone graduated high school then.

The question, then, is how to find them. I'm not totally sold on some suggestions which have been floated by other bloggers. Making the exterior of anything shiny has never been the answer to truly keeping a house in order. Finding college student volunteers to serve in exchange for class credit, or high school students writing essays for a scholarship competition may be commendable outreaches, but those are not where we will find committed, long-term members willing to volunteer over the long run.

My hunch is to go back to basics and remember what it was that got us started as members of our own local association. In my case, it was the invitation of a genealogy friend which got me to my first meeting. A connection with a friend and a sharing of a mutual interest. The people element combined with the purpose equation.

Another thought is to think of when we first turned our thoughts to belonging with a group of like-minded people. For many of the members in our group, it was when they gave their first serious thought at retiring from a full-time occupation: then what? Some people make golfing their new full-time job. Others embark on a journey to discover new hobbies they hope they'll learn to love. But retirement is often the spark that gets some people saying, "I always wanted to look into my family history, and now I have the time to do it." I know that is what the students in my beginning genealogy classes tell me.

If you graduated high school in fifty-anything and are still working hard as a volunteer with your local genealogical society, that is great! I hope you will be able to keep up your service for many years to come. But if you were a graduate of the seventies, or the eighties, or even more recent than that, I hope you are ready to step up and try your hand at making your local genealogical society everything that it can be.

And when you do, bring your friends with you. Almost everything is more fun when you do it with your friends. I know genealogy is.

At the Trail's End

 

The positive aspect about plans is the way they keep us on the straight and narrow research trail in accomplishing goals. If you plan things like I do, though, there is usually more plan than month in which to complete it. This month, however, is quite the opposite. Though I've had good intentions, my plan to learn more about my father-in-law's great-grandparents, Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery, yielded me little.

Instead, I hit a snag: a detour into an entirely new branch of the Tully line. That unexpected turn came when I discovered Denis and Margaret may have had a son I never knew about. That son, also named Dennis, was the ancestor of more than eight DNA matches for my husband. This was someone I couldn't simply ignore. Never mind the lack of documentation, either back in his native Ireland or in his immigrant home in Ontario, Canada.

At this point, I've nearly completed as much as could be found on the many descendants of Dennis Tully and his wife, Margaret Hurley. In addition, I've linked those eight ThruLines DNA matches to my husband's tree and found three more matches within those at Ancestry.com. Since then, I've combed through his matches at three other companies: MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, and 23 and Me. Through that research journey, I've confirmed at least one more DNA match at MyHeritage and am still watching for others.

Yet that original goal—to learn more about Dennis Tully's parents in the Tully and Flannery lines—has brought me no closer than I was when I started. With a little over half a month remaining, I've run out of plan before I've run out of time. I could jump ahead to my goal for October, moving into the last quarter of the year, which I usually devote to my own father's difficult-to-research Polish lines. Or I could try exploring another avenue which needs attention.

The down side to relying on monthly plans is that if those plans run short of month, I'm quite out of practice being spontaneous. Where is the allure of those rabbit trails when you need them to be beguiled?