Sharing case studies, methodologies, and resource materials. I’m working to add generations to my tree using full documentary evidence confirmed by DNA analysis.
Welcome!
I started this blog because I was frustrated with having to “reinvent the wheel” —- mothers and fathers are attached to trees in ancestry.com with no sources. The familysearch.org One-World Tree is riddled with folks attaching whole generations of people with no sources. Even my family lines within Wiki-Tree are filled with errors and sources that say, “Personal knowledge of Joe-Shmoe”.
And most of the time, once I put in the work and pay for the records, the random mothers and fathers listed end up being correct. So, listen, I’m not pretending that I’m up-ending long-held beliefs about family lines or anything. However, I am providing direct evidence of family relationships or strong circumstantial cases along with DNA correlation to confirm family lines. And yeah, sometimes I break down a brick wall and discover a new grandfather or grandmother and those are fun too. And I provide the documentary evidence for all to read and review.
Please browse around a bit. My posts tend to be quite Florida- and Georgia-heavy because, well, all the branches of my family have been in Florida since the early 1900s and most of them came from Georgia before that. But there are a few things sprinkled in there from Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina as well.
If I run across a really fun resource, I like to share that here as well. My case studies are presented informally and every detail presented is sourced by documentary evidence that I provide directly to you, the reader.
Please follow along to read stories of discovery and heartbreak, to learn tips and tricks, organization and research strategies, and (if you are a cousin) to learn more about the details of our shared family lines.
Recent Posts
Join me in my adventure in family discovery!
George Hanson “Hans” Montgomery, Part 3
George Hanson “Hans” Montgomery; Part 2
I’ve told you the story of how I got my first leads on determining who the parents of my third great-grandfather, George Montgomery, were. You can read about it here . After I attached Robert Montgomery (b. abt 1807) to my family tree within Ancestry.com and waited for ThruLines to do its calculations.
When in Tallahassee…Go to the State Archives
When a search at the county level turned up no records, a trip to the Florida Supreme Court was the next step. One of my second great-grandfathers is a man named Howell Romulus “H R” Montgomery. He was born in Georgia in 1880 and later moved to Florida with his wife, Ella Lane.
Identifying a Neighbor on a Census Helped Me to Break Through My Brick Wall
When dreaming and planning to start this blog, one of the genealogy adventures I most wanted to share with everybody was the journey to find my third great grandfather, George Montgomery. I have composed this story in a thousand different ways in my mind, but I have realized that this story is made up of many different adventures and is too big for one condensed post. Just when I think that I've learned everything that there is to know about George Montgomery, I stumble across another incredible find!
When ThruLines tells you one thing, but the records tell you another
Right around the time that I first started doing genealogy, Ancestry introduced ThruLines . I can not reiterate enough that I have never attempted genealogy without DNA and I have never confirmed DNA findings without paper genealogy.