My Trails into the Past

Sometimes our genealogy database is not completely clean and tidy. I might know a fact’s date down to the minute. I might not know the exact place an event took place. Different records that name our ancestors might give us different answers to a research question. So, what do we do? Enter all the different dates into our database? Pick the best one and ignore the rest? This is where following the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) helps us answer this. [1] For a reminder, the GPS asks us to first do reasonably exhaustive research, while recording source citations for each item we find. We also must analyze each document and the information we find in the document to understand the source of the information. If we get conflicting information, and that is common when we find different dates for an event, we work at resolving the conflict, hoping to get close to the correct answer. And lastly, we write up our conclusions and share them. [2] When we have multiple information pieces tha...

Once the research expands back into the census with tick marks and only the head of household listed, it becomes more difficult. I have a family who were living in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, in 1850. The head of household and his wife were born in South Carolina. The children were born in Alabama, with the youngest at 1 years listed as born in Alabama, suggesting they came recently to Mississippi. Common Surname Their name is common: Johnston, which often is rendered as Johnson. I must look at people with both spellings. His first name was Sam or Samuel. I have found 14 men with the first name of Sam, Samuel, or S Johnson/Johnston in the 1840 Alabama census. Three households have a man in the right age group: Samuel Johnston, Talladega Co. Samuel Johnston, Benton Co. S. Johnson, Lauderdale Co. Of course, it is also possible that they moved to Alabama after the 1840 census enumeration was conducted and were still in South Carolina, or were in the act of traveling to Alabam...

Our family is fortunate that Amos Gorrell kept a yearly diary, at least from 1861 through 1872. Those are the years that we have transcribed. The early diaries are of his time during the Civil War, though 1862 & 1863 are missing. He might have lost them sometime in battle. They picked up again in 1864 and continue yearly through 1872. Like many farmer diaries, they are full of weather observations, purchase and sales figures, and the work he did on his farm or a neighbor’s farm. When I share entries during a talk I give about researching our farming ancestors, I point out that these need to be read over a period of time to get an understanding of their life. However, today, I shall share a few entries from 1866. I have not read these in a long while and I might pick up something I hadn’t realized earlier. That’s a good thing. Read diaries more than once. You’ll notice different things at different readings. These diaries I'm working from are transcribed. The originals were ...

I have been working with tax records in Beaver County for my husband’s Gorrell family. The tax records for the family range from 1804 through 1840 across two or three different townships. Some years there are one or two entries, other years three or four. I recorded the entries by year and included the census entries from 1800 to 1840. These are census records with only the head of household and tick marks for the other members by age and sex. I also included some of my own comments and source citations. I ended up with 9 pages. The work I’m doing is to find the family of Amos Gorrell (1804-1890). Here is an example of what I created: 1800 South Beaver Township census . The only townships at this time were First Moon, Hanover, North Beaver, Second Moon, Sewickley, and South Beaver. The Gorrells were enumerated in South Beaver Township. Two men were enumerated next to each other. One James is older than the other, also indicated by the senior and junior appendages to their name. It ...