May be distributed and/or reprinted so long as (1) original credits and this notice are not removed, (2) any revisions, deletions, or additions are clearly identified, and (3) no charge is made, except possibly a nominal charge to cover copy costs. The authors offer this information freely to the community and make no warrantee as to its accuracy. Searching Forward in Time Discussion leader: Karen Isaacson Rule #1: Always search from the known to the unknown, from you to your parents, your parents to your grandparents, etc. Rule #2: All rules are made to be broken. One question, if not the question, is ... when? When should you disregard all advice, however well-intentioned, and follow your intuition or a family tradition and try to make that link from the distant (potential) ancestor, forwards to some more recent already identified ancestor? Never is probably not the right answer, although your mileage may differ. My husband Brian (leverich@rand.org) and I started doing genealogy in the summer of 1986. We were as green as could be. I blush now to think of some of the questions I asked endlessly patient librarians and courthouse employees. We were on vacation, and visited many of the counties from which my ancestors had come. We hadn't really started working on Brian's yet. But in Madison County, Iowa (and yes, we did go see some of the bridges, though they weren't nearly so famous then), while looking for information on my BRINSONs and BURTONs and SMITHs and PAULs, I noticed that there were =also= LEVERICHes listed. Did we write down the LEVERICH information? No. Did we pay any attention to it? Not really, other than feeling mildly surprised at the appearance of this fairly unusual surname in these record books. Why not? Well, that's harder, but essentially, we were following the rules, as we understood them. We were working from the known to the unknown. Brian's family was from Oklahoma, so this data probably had nothing to do with him, and we'd be silly to waste our time writing it down. Yeah, sure, right. Guess what? A month and 1000+ miles later, working with information in the United State census and various census indices, Brian traced his LEVERICH line back to ... Madison County, Iowa. And accessing the information from Los Angeles wasn't nearly so convenient as it would have been if we'd simply jotted it down while we were in Iowa. (Just for the record, though, the librarians and courthouse employees of Madison County were wonderful, and sent us reams and reams of photocopied information in exchange for very modest donations.) On the other hand, if one simply goes from book to book, jotting down any LEVERICH data one runs across, it probably never will coalesce into something useful. (This clearly is related to the earlier "How Much Data" thread.) I tend to think of this more along the lines of hedging bets, or allowing for serendipity, or following my intuition. Nowadays, if it looks like the genealogy muses have tossed a plum in my lap (another rule: don't mix your metaphors), I happily glom onto it and check it out. If nothing else, it keeps life interesting. I've learned more than I care to admit about several different lines of BURTONs in southeastern Indiana. I'd be happy to claim any of them as my own. If I could only decide which. Anyhow, to get to the point, when and how should you consider trying to skip some generations and work your ways forward from the unknown to the known? I suspect we've all done this with varying degrees of success from time to time, and I'd be interested to hear some success stories. Factors that make success more probable: 1) You're only trying to go a few generations. For instance, in my BRINSON line, the first name =Stout= appears over and over in the early generations. The BRINSONs were from New Jersey, and a check of the index to the New Jersey Wills found a couple of BRINSONs listed as grandsons of a STOUT. =Lots= of smoke. It proved useful to trace the two BRINSON heirs, one of whom proved to be the father of my then-earliest BRINSON. 2) You're in the right geographic neighborhood. Zebulon BRINSON the wolf hunter was a (locally) famous settler of Ripley County, Indiana in the 1820s. In 1847, my John M. BURTON married Catharine BRINSON in Ripley County. Catharine was turned out to be Zebulon's granddaughter, and the BRINSON records of Ripley County are such a tangle that it's =much= easier starting in Zeb's day (when there was just the one BRINSON) and working forward, keeping them all untangled, and discovering Catharine's parents this way. 3) You're researching a very unusual surname. All the LEVERICHes in the United States probably descend from the Rev. William LEVERICH who came over in the 1600s. With an unusual surname and/or old New England stock, there will often have been a study of "everyone" with the name. Find the book or the researcher who someday will be writing the book, compare the information you have on your grandfather or great-grandfather, and presto!, you may have your line filled out back to the immigrant, just like that. Though sometimes you have to trace your line in the regular manner back farther than you might credit, before you can link to one of these genealogies. I had to work my MERRILL line back to the late 1700s before I at least found my link to the MERRILL Memorial (a book) and thence to Nathaniel MERRILL the immigrant. Of course, this does raise the issue (which I'm going to merrily duck after giving it this polite nod) or how trustworthy these books are. In general, if they're not citing verifiable original records that you can check, it's better to regard them as a roadmap, and you should reverify each link as best you can. There =are= mistakes in the books, that get perpetuated over and over again. Do a reality check, don't take it on faith, or you may end up adopting someone else's ancestors rather than your own. 4) You're connected to someone famous. Hey, =somebody= has to be! Bea Beck rose to the challenge I made last month, when I asked if anyone had heard they were descended from some particular famous person and then were able to prove it by hard work, hard work that was necessary because the link wasn't mapped out for them. And that's just what Bea did. She'd been told she was descended from Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And after three years, she proved the link. What helped? She did use a WITHERSPOON genealogy that sounds similar in nature to that I found for my MERRILLs. Because WITHERSPOON himself was famous, she was able to find biographical material about him and familiarized herself with the names of his descendents and their wives, recognizing a key name that recurred in her tree. And she worked... What to do if you've heard you're descended from Benjamin FRANKLIN and simply don't want to ignore the rumor? Well, first, work backwards from the known to the unknown. :-) But I'd also recommend reading up on FRANKLIN -- find out when and where he lived, who his parents and siblings were and when and where they lived. Some of this should fall fairly easily out of a good biography. Something has usually been written about the genealogy of most famous people -- I'd try to find a book or an article detailing the first few generations of his descendents. Read the names and places mentioned, to see if something clicks. (Someone responding to the earlier thread had heard of a connection to Johnny "Appleseed" CHAPMAN, and found that his ancestors and CHAPMAN lived in the same township in Ohio. The link isn't established, but it's pretty clear which area to research the most closely.) How and when have others of you "researched forward"? What's worked for you? -- Karen **** Group Discussions I make it a practice to search forward in time for my unusual surnames. On my infamous BEVARD line, I have managed to link everybody I have found to one of three main USA lines. (The problem is linking those three lines to each other, but that's another topic.) My best success story is on the HOFFMEYER line. While in Muscatine, IA, last year, I found a man named MARK, the family name of one of the HOFFMEYER daughters. It's a small town, so I thought it was worth a try.The man turned out to be the grandson of Louise HOFFMEYER MARK (1847-1930). I knew about Louise (the sister of my direct ancestor) by tracing her forward from the first place I found her--the 1850 census. My new cousin in Muscatine wasn't "into" genealogy--we all know that type--but he put me in touch with his first cousin in California. This lady was 15 years or so older than the man, and she remembered much more. She has been a gold mine of information! She even knew the places of origin of the immigrant ancestors. And since A. F. HOFFMEYER had disappeared in California in 1854, her knowledge of the family shame was probably the only source there was. (The old goat took up with a loose woman in California, abandoning the family in Iowa.) I have been able to confirm almost everything she has told me. I would have known none of this without tracing forward. -- Kathy Schroeder **** This class title confused me at first. I search "forward in time" most of the time, and at the same time go from the "known to the unknown". I'm interested in family history, not just lineage so I go back to the earliest person I can verify I'm descended from and then try to find all of their descendants. I've also found that this technique often gives me hints to who the "earliest known persons" parents are and/or where they came from. But I digress. I've been researching a line in which I felt I had no other choice than to go from the "unknown" to the "known". My ancestor, Joseph Greenwood, served in 1st Delaware Regiment in the American Revolution. I've been unable to determine who his parents or siblings are. He left DE right after the war and moved to NC, later to TN, AL, and KY. I've found three distinct Greenwood families in DE and the eastern shore of MD. I searched these families forward to see if there was a connection. I haven't had much luck though, two of these families include individuals named Joseph, but none the right age for my Joseph. I'm pretty sure my Joseph belongs to one of these families, but I'm at about the end of my rope trying to determine which one. The more I find out about each line, the muddier the water seems to get. -- "J.S. Russell" **** Joel brings up an important point. I know genealogy is a hard word for many to spell, but even more rarified knowledge is the definition of what is meant by "a genealogy". What many people work on, especially when they start out, is a pedigree, and my post was slanted towards that sort of research. When you work on someone's pedigree, you're trying to find their ancestors. When you work on someone's genealogy, you're trying to find their =descendents=. And to do that, you work from the known to the unknown by searching =forward in time=. Genealogists do this all the time, and aren't even breaking the rules. :-) And in fact, sorting out what happened to 2nd cousin Jerry ISAACSON who rumor had it had moved to Illinois turned out to be a harder project than tracing several generations of Jerry's (and my) Swedish ancestors. -- Karen Isaacson **** Karen asked, "...when and how should you consider trying to skip some generations and work your way forward from the unknown to the known?" I've had success in working forward. The three factors that Karen mentions are important, however, to my success; I world go further to suggest that geographic location (coupled with historical period) is the most important of the three. My great uncle, Frank Yant STUMP, Jr., gave me a list (just names and a few dates of his pedigree back to the WALTON family in England in the late 1500s. He did not know the source of the information. He did not know his STUMP ancestors past his great grandparents, Daniel & Elizabeth (YANT) STUMP. (He did confirm the Johnny Appleseed story that I had from my mother :-)...I told my uncle I would work on the STUMP line. He died a month later so I was unable to tap his brain for more information. I worked with about 14 surnames in the STUMP/WALTON lines checking just about any reference source I could get my hands on (as an academic librarian, I can get my hands on a lot :-) I found Benjamin GILBERT in *Biography Index*. Upon checking out the citation, I learned that he was the father of Sarah GILBERT, one of the WALTON wives and my 4th gr grandmother. I identified Johannes GLUECK in the *National Cyclopaedia of American Biography* in the entry on George Washington GLICK. Johannes is a 5th gr grandfather. The first breakthrough in the STUMP line was finding the record of his gr grandparents' marriage on CD-ROM and learning that they married in Stark Co., OH. I knew that pre-1850 census records for Ohio were not available in Jacksonville, so I requested some county histories on interlibrary loan (ILL). There were Daniel's father, Frederick and Margaret (SMITH) STUMP; Margaret's parents, Daniel and Eve (HECK) SMITH of Franklin Co., PA; Elizabeth's parents, Abraham and Catharine YANT; and Abraham's father, Philip YANT. I was lucky in that Frederick STUMP and Abraham YANT were early settlers of the county and there were enough relatives living when the histories were written to get some stories as well as names, dates, and places. I know that Frederick STUMP was born in Bethel Twp., Berks Co., PA in 1781, that he moved with his parents as a boy to Franklin Co., where he met and married Margaret SMITH in 1806. They moved almost immediately to Ohio, where Daniel was born in 1808. There the trail ends in working backwards. Confederate forces en route to Gettysburg burned Chambersburg, the county seat of Franklin Co., along with most of the county's records. Earlier, in working with other (unrelated) ancestors, I had borrowed (on ILL) some colonial tax records for Berks Co., covering various years between 1767 and 1785. I had had the foresight to photocopy the records of townships with all *known* ancestral surnames--just in case. So I have a record of the STUMPs who paid taxes during that period. Bibliographic research had led me to another Frederick STUMP, a renegade Indian killer who had founded the town of Frederickstown, Lebanon Co., PA, and later helped establish Nashville, TN. A recent book about him provides very well-documented information on his ancestry and brothers of his who went to Berks Co. Several given names that are the same in the two families are additional clues. I am certain that I have found Frederick STUMP's family, although I cannot document it (yet) or even precisely identify his parents. But I am confident that I have their names, pending such time as I find the right piece of information. All of these relationships could probably been ferreted out in the more sensible method of working backwards. However, armed with ignorance, lack of resources, impatience, and ILL, I have learned a thing or two. -- "David M. Jones 904/745-7267" **** President Warren G. Harding is supposed to have said: "I know it's in a book somewhere, but, dammit! I don't know which book!" (That's how I feel on a "bad heir day") Karen mentioned (and then ducked) the reliability of the secondary sources that we often consult in our ancestral quests. In my previous post to this thread, I mentioned using county histories and other sources to find links from the unknown to the known. As I mentioned the other day, I've been very lucky in this regard in finding quite a few ancestors in several counties in Ohio. I want to emphasize what Karen said about using these as "roadmaps" and not as "documentation." Also be *very* thorough in your reading of these sources so that you do not miss anything. An example of the latter instance I found in *Old Landmarks of Canton and Stark County, Ohio*, edited by John Danner (1904). After discussing the YANT family, he ends this section with Abraham YANT's death and begins discussing the abundance of game. He ends the paragraph with an account of a fight between a bear and a greyhound belonging to Abraham *KANT*. The next paragraph goes on to discuss the long friendship between the BRANTINGHAM and YANT families, so I'm sure that "KANT" is a typographical error. However, I almost missed it. An example of an error being perpetuated from book to book is what I came to call the "Mystery of Daniel GLICK." I had from my grandmother an account of the early pioneers of Fairfield and Pickaway counties, Ohio, by my ggg grandfather, Peter BROBST. I later found the GLICK and BROBST families listed among the early settlers of Bloom Twp. in county histories circa 1880-1910. They all related the story of how Daniel GLICK came out from PA, bought some land, and died after getting his family, sometime in the winter of 1806-1807. One source embellishes the story with his choosing a site a nice place for a cemetery and then becoming its first occupant. The story was apparently picked up in a GLICK genealogy, which I have never seen. My problem was that Peter BROBST discusses his Grandfather (Daniel) GLICK delivering meat to the penitentiary at Columbus in 1816 and building a grist mill in 1817. The error was reconciled by Helen MARKHAM about 1986 when she discovered Daniel's will--written in 1821 and probated in 1824. Daniel had been confused with his brother Peter, who was the one who had died. BTW, Peter & his wife are buried across the road from the cemetery, so even *that* part was wrong. Your own personal research goals will determine how much documentation you are going to pursue. Just don't believe everything you read in a book. -- David Jones jonesd2@mail.firn.edu **** In article 7su@monty.rand.org, karen@rand.org () writes: > > Searching Forward in Time > >Rule #1: Always search from the known to the unknown, from you to your >parents, your parents to your grandparents, etc. When you say "forward", don't you mean "backward"? > How and when have others of you "researched > forward"? What's worked for you? Share with the group, and then I'll > summarize the main threads in a few days. OK, I'm game. Assuming you mean searching backward into time, I can give you an interesting perspective -- that of a Jewish genealogist. However, first I have to give you some background (foreground??) on how Jewish genealogy (in particular, Eastern European Jewry, which make of the vast majority of the ancestors of those Jews now living in Western Europe and the Americas) is somewhat different from other types. First, most Jews did not have surnames until the early 1800s... some as late as 1850 in parts of Russia. When they did acquire surnames, the names were considered a government intrusion into their lives. As a result, they did not necessarily hold them dear to the families and frequently changed them to something else, especially upon emigration. Second, very few records exist that provide documentation about Jewish individuals. There were generally no civil records of any type until the mid to late 1800s when Jews were taxed separately or drafted into the army. Prior to this, the Jewish community of each town was considered by the civil authorities as a single entity for tax or legal purposes. With that said, I sometimes laugh with envy anytime someone on this group relates stories of John Smith who came over on the Mayflower and who had a child whose line may or may not be related to a living person. This assumes that all kinds of documentation exists, and that the people followed naming rules that are in existence today. Most Jewish genealogists I know are overjoyed if they can get their family trees back to the early 1800s. Now back to the topic of the class... I suspect that many groups of people encounter similar problems of documentation just like I described. I suspect this is a problem for African American genealogists, and perhaps Scandinavian genealogists. The way I deal with this is to completely rely upon oral histories and to move to living relatives in as many collateral lines as possible. This may sound someone foreign to researchers who may cringe at the thought of unverifiable evidence, but this technique is the only one available to me. Interestingly, if done carefully, oral histories can help verify each other. One needs to look at unsolicited overlaps, or perhaps events that could be documented. For instance, in one oral history I heard about a relative who survived a fire in a synagogue during services. In Russian accounts, I was able to verify that such a fire actually occurred and the dates. Thus, I was able to verify that the account was accurate and tie down some dates. In another example, the interviewee referred to a special ceremony known as a "Black Wedding", of which she claimed to be an eyewitness. Upon interviewing people from the town who were not related to me, I discovered that this event could be confirmed by others, thus pinning down the date and verifying these accounts. In conclusion, going backwards in time from the known to the unknown is the modus operandi for those of us that have no other documentation. Those that are successful in this method have to go parallel into collateral living branches. -- David Chapin (dchapin@er.arco.com) **** In article <3k6vq6$7su@monty.rand.org>, karen@rand.org wrote: > Rule #1: Always search from the known to the unknown, from you to > your parents, your parents to your grandparents, etc. Having spent my life belligerently doing things the hard way, I disagree. We who utilize libraries--and do not depend entirely on postings and e-mail for our research--run across lots of old information about the surnames we are chasing. For instance Greenes, Warners, Barnums, Glovers and others in Old England--from whence these of my lines are known to have come. Rather than leaving this information neglected in the library, I run to a copy machine and bring it home. I put it into my computer file. When I make that connection between England the the Colonies with one or two of these lines, I will have quite a file of ancestry sitting here on disk. This seems no more senseless to me than finding the connection, then having to go back and find that library material (wherever it was) again. With this searching "forward," I have to admit that I've tossed quite a bit of material--but occasionally I also make a hit. In addition, I have a mini-library right here at hand--giving me ready reference to possible sibling lines, etc. -- camfield@olympus net (Tom) **** Tom Camfield (camfield@olympus.net) wrote: >We who utilize libraries--and do not depend entirely on >postings and e-mail for our research--run across lots of old > information about the surnames we are chasing. (snip) >Rather than leaving this information neglected in the library, >I run to a copy machine and bring it home. (snip snip) After dusting off thousands of leather jackets in many libraries I also have found that the number one rule of ancestor surfing is: *Copy Copy Copy* -- even if you don't think you'll need it - don't think you'll ever use it - and aren't interested anyway! To this day I rue passing up that small snippet of information that made the link between a 1600 line and a 1700 line! Crisp copies of thousands of biographies of cousins now line my files. I finally made the "connection" between nearly all of the dangling relatives and the first ancestor to America, and suddenly I had an instant book and a quarterly newsletter for my new found "cousins". Believe me all of them are *glad* that I did not throw that material away! So don't even think about passing up that small bit of inconsequential information -- you just never know when you will need it! -- RebaK47992@aol.com (Reba Munger Kemery) **** In addition, doing "forward in time" research can help you past roadblocks in some instances. I traced my ANDREWS ancestry back five generations and got stuck. So, I then traced the earliest couple forward. Using this method, I was able to contact numerous (50 and growing) living cousins. I sent each a brief letter and chart describing our relationship and any special information (Civil War service, etc.) that I had about their ancestry. Then I asked if they had any information, family rumor, or stories about our common origins. With the help I received, I am now past the roadblock and am once again working backwards. -- craig01@med.unc.edu (CRAndrews) **** Several people pointed out the problem with the title on this. I think the key concept whether working on descendants or ancestors is that of jumping over one or more generations and then working back across the gap. That being said, there are 2 situations in which I have found that useful. Both share the common attribute that there is a well documented family of the same surname in the same region as the one that you are researching. In the first case I expect to connect to that family and want to extend the lines of research in the earlier documentation to connect up. This has paid off with my Schvller ancestors in Tailfingen, W|rttemberg. Where I had linked to Ebingen (a nearby town) and expected to connect with the families in Tailfingen (where the surname is still common). In the second case I am fairly sure that I WON'T connect. In this case I am usually trying to identify people with the surname connected to THE OTHER family so that I don't confuse them with my own. This has worked with trying to sort out the various Stierlin families in Ebingen (these all eventually linked together but I had another 100 years of records to cover before I got to the link) and with the Achenbach families in Pennsylvania. -- Dick Schoeller