Putnam County IN Order Books and Abner Goodwin

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts entitled "Finding the Heirs of Etheldred Godwin" in which I used land records to determine who were the children of Etheldred Godwin. Following the discovery of seven separate deeds each naming off their 1/7th share of Etheldred's land, I decided to see if there was any other mention of this division of land in the Putnam County, Indiana Circuit Court. I had already determined that there was no probate or estate record on file for Etheldred Godwin.

I ordered the "Complete Order books, circuit court, Putnam Co., IN, 1823-1915, vols. C-D, Apr 23, 1841 - Apr 12, 1862" family history film no. 2416111 from my local Family History Center. I was looking for court cases related to the probate of Etheldred Godwin's estate in 1852. I did not find any listings for Godwin or his descendants with the surnames of Thomas, Sabin, and McAlister in either of these two volumes C and D.

The only entry I found was for the estate of Abner GOODWIN:

On May 6, 1858 a case came before the court between Polly and James Goodwin, executors of the estate of Abner Goodwin, dec'd on the one part, and David, Elisha, and Greenberry Mullinex and Riley Bev's(sp?) on the other part. The Mullinexes had an attorney present who agreed to appear before the court for them and to waive the essence of a "scirifaces" and to confess a judgment of "revion" in favor of Polly and James Goodwin, executors of the last will and testament of Abner Goodwin, dec'd for the amount of a judgment rendered in favor of said Goodwin for $485 and with all interest and costs due thereon, rendered at the Nov term of said court 1848. 

(Source: Complete Order books, Putnam Co., IN, Family History Film no. 2416111, volume D, p. 238)

I have identified this Abner Goodwin as one Abner Connely Goodwin, son of John Goodwin(e) and Martha Heady. According to a user submitted IGI file on Ancestry.com, Abner was born about 1791 in Wheeling, VA. He married Charollet Ginn 27 Aug 1812 in Bardstown, KY.

He died 12 Sept 1849 according to his headstone transcription in Bethel Baptist church, Vermillion Cemetery posted on the Putnam Co., IN USGenWeb site.

Abner "Godwin" was enumerated on the 1830 Putnam Co., IN census report.

In his household, he had:
1 male under the age of 5
2 males between 5 and 10
2 males between 10 and 15
1 male between 30 and 40
2 females under the age of 5
3 females between 5 and 10
1 female between 10 and 15
1 female between 15 and 20
1 female between 40 and 50

The male between the ages of 30 and 40 was probably Abner, which would put his date of birth at approximately between 1790 and 1800. His first wife, Charlotte, was probably the female who was between the age of 40 and 50, making her born approximate between 1780 and 1790.

Other than Abner and Charlotte, there were a total of 5 males and 7 female children living in the household at the time this census was taken. We cannot assume they were all necessarily children, though, as they could have been nieces or nephews, etc.

(Source: 1830 US Federal Census, Putman County, Indiana, population schedule, , Page 193, Abner Godwin; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : downloaded 14 May 2012); NARA Film M19, Roll 30, FHL Film 0007719.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Between 1822 and 1839, Abner Goodwin purchased a total of 9 tracts of land (almost 800 acres total) in Putnam, Owen, and Monroe counties, in Indiana. According to his first two patents for 72 and 80 acres in Putnam County, Indiana on November 13, 1822, Abner Goodwin was "of Nelson County, Kentucky." It is always a good idea to look at the patent image that is usually included on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) site because it can give you clues like this that can help to tie your ancestor to another location. This "of Nelson County, Kentucky" helps to support the IGI file that mentions that Abner spent some time in Kentucky. By the time he filed for his 2nd set of patents in 1823, Abner Goodwin was "of Putnam County, Indiana."

Cropped patent image for Abner Goodwin "of Nelson County, Kentucky" for 80 acres in Putnam County, Indiana in 1822.

A list of all of Abner Goodwin's land patents filed in Indiana between 1822-1839.

1.  Abner Goodwin "of Nelson County, Kentucky," received 72 ac, Putnam Co, 13 Nov 1822 (Terra Haute Land Office)
2.  Abner Goodwin "of Nelson County, Kentucky," received 80 ac, Putnam Co, 13 Nov 1822 (Terra Haute Land Office)
3.  Abner Goodwin "of Putnam County, Indiana," received 80 ac, Putnam Co, 10 July 1823 (Terra Haute Land Office)
4.  Abner Goodwin "of Putnam County, Indiana ," received 160 ac, Putnam Co, 15 Apr 1824 (Crawfordsville Land Office)
5.  Abner Goodwin and Levi S. Stewart "of Putnam County, Indiana," received 80 ac, Putnam Co., 10 Nov 1824 (Crawfordsville Land Office)
6.  Abner Goodwin "of Putnam County, Indiana," received 72.6 ac, Putnam Co, 15 Dec 1826 (Crawfordsville Land Office)

In 1828, we see a change: Abner Goodwin purchases land in Owen County instead of Putnam County and he is listed as being of "Monroe County, Indiana." - check the Monroe Co deed indexes. There are deeds passed between Abner and Nancy Goodwin and Joshua, Josiah, and William Goodwin, none of which are named as children of this Abner Goodwin - were there two Abner Goodwins? - Yes, there was Abner Connolly Godwin, b. 1791 in VA who moved from KY to Putnam Co., IN and died in 1849 and there was Abner Goodwin who married Nancy Hogan who was born about 1804 in KY and moved to IN in the 1820s. The lives of these two men overlapped. 

7.  Abner Goodwin "of Monroe County, Indiana" received 80 ac, Owen Co, 5 May 1828 (Vincennes Land Office)
8.  Abner Goodwin "of Putnam County, Indiana" received 80 ac, Owen Co, 10 Sept 1838, (Crawfordsville Land Office)
9.  Abner Goodwin "of Greene County, Indiana" received 40 ac, Monroe Co, 1 Aug 1839, (Vincennes Land Office)

(Source: U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Website, Land Patent Search, Abner Goodwin (http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx, accessed 29 Aug 2006).

In 1828 and 1829, Abner Goodwin was listed on the Clay County, Indiana tax lists. 

(Source: Charles M Franklin, Owen County, Indiana, Miscellaneous, Volume 1, Tax Lists, 1819-1829 (Indianapolis, Indiana: Ye Olde Genealogie Shoppe, 1982), page 13; North Carolina State Library, Raleigh, NC). 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 11 Sept 1834, Abner Goodwin took out a marriage bond to marry Polly Gardner in Putnam Co., IN. His first wife, Charlotte, must have died between 1830, when Abner and a woman old enough to be his wife was enumerated, and 1834 when Abner was remarried.

(Source: Charles M Franklin, Putnam County, Indiana Early Marriage Records, 1822-1837 (Indianapolis, Indiana: Ye Olde Genealogie Shoppe, 1982), no page noted; North Carolina State Library, Raleigh, NC).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Either Abner and his family moved around a lot or the county boundary lines between Owen and Putnam changed a few times because Abner was next enumerated in Owen Co., IN in 1840. He had 14 children living at home with him and his wife. They lived in Montgomery township. In 1838 Abner, who was "of Putnam County, Indiana," purchased 80 acres in Owen County and a year later in 1839, Abner Goodwin "of Greene County, Indiana," purchased 40 acres in Monroe County.

Here are a list of all the counties that Abner was mentioned in:

Clay - formed 1825 from Brazil
Owen - formed 1819 from Spencer
Putnam - formed 1822 from Greencastle
Monroe - formed 1818 from Bloomington
Greene - formed 1821 from Bloomfield

All of these counties, with the exception of Clay, were formed before Abner arrived in Indiana so there is no possibility of boundary changes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 10 Sept 1849, Abner Goodwin wrote a will that was filed in the Owen County, Indiana Will Book 1, p. 130. It was recorded 22 Spt 1849. His wife was Polly Goodwin; It mentioned 18 children. The following were listed by name: Milton, Berton (deaf and dumb), Mary (deaf and dumb), Helen, James H, Christopher C, Cela, George, Malinda, Charlota, Rebecca, Newton Thomas; He named his wife Polly Goodwin and son James H. Goodwin as the executors of his estate. John W Gladson, Ervin P. Carmack, and James Carmack witnessed the writing of his will.

Abner Goodwin's headstone transcription is listed in the Putnam County, Indiana Cemetery Records on the Indiana USGenWeb site. He is buried in Bethel Baptist Church Cemetery, now known as Vermillion Cemetery in Putnam Co., IN. He died September 12th, 1849, and was 58 years of age (putting his date of birth about 1791). His 2nd wife Mary died April 11th, 1855. She was 56 years old (born about 1799). His 1st wife Charlotte was also buried beside him, however the dates listed on her headstone were unreadable. Another website, "Memorial Menders of Putnam County" (Indiana), added the note that Abner's will also stated that "I, Abner Goodwin of Owen County, State of Indiana ... direct that my body be decently buried by the side of my first wife ... There is one acre of land that I gave to the Baptist Church in Putnam County for a public burying ground to be used for that purpose by the people." So this is probably the main source of information that Abner's first wife Charlotte was also buried in this cemetery next to him.

I have not reviewed a copy of Abner Goodwin's will directly as I am not related to him. However if you have a copy of his will and would like to share with me I would be happy to post to the site. Also, if you or a descendant of either of these two Abners and would be interested in participating in the Goodwin DNA Surname project at ftDNA please let me know as there is significant interest in separating the various Godwin-Goodwin-Goodin/Gooden lines in Ohio and Indiana.

More information on the ancestry of Abner Goodwin can be found on the Goodwine Family Genforum message board here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Disclaimer: This post is in development mode, so if you find any discrepancies or errors, please let me know. Or if you have any comments or suggestions to add, please feel free to Email me. I have been updating this post gradually as I come across more information.

Keeping Track of My 2nd Great-Grandparents

I have 8 sets of 2^nd great-grandparents with a total of 16 individuals.

Paternal Line:

Set # 1: Claude Rual Smith (1896 - 1975) and Willie Harriet Riddle (1899 – 1985)

Set # 2: Fred Fox (1884 – 1974) and Melvina West (1882 – 1978)

Set # 3: John Milton Binns (1868 – 1961) and Perthinia “Pert” Eula Brooks (1873 – 1942)

Set # 4: Nathaniel Gustaves Hill (1873 – 1944) and Jessie Inez Barton (1875 – 1950)

Maternal Line:

Set # 1: Alvin Theodore Godwin (1879 – 1950) and Louella Davis (1882 – 1947)

Set # 2: William Edward Peters (1874 – 1948) and Dora King (1875 – 1912)

Set # 3: James Franklin Lasiter (1876 – 1968) and Rosalie Putman (1875 – 1961)

Set # 4: Barney Sheron Benson (1884 – 1952) and Eva Mae Dennis (1889 – 1983)

I was born in 1976. As you can see, two of my paternal 2^nd great-grandfathers died 1 or 2 years before I was born and 2 of my paternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me in their arms (The obituary of one of my 2^nd great-grandmothers, Willie Harriet Riddle Smith, mentioned that she had 18 2^nd great-grandchildren!)

One of my maternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me. I wasn’t the only one though. She had several other 2^nd great-grandchildren that she travelled around to visit with. Check out my 5-generation photos:

 Back Row: Sue Lasiter (my grandmother), Marilyn Godwin (my mother), Louise Benson Lasiter (my great-grandmother); Front: Eva Dennis Benson (my 2nd great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me!). Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, inherited from Louise Lasiter. Copyright 2012. 

Back Row: Claude Rual Smith, Jr (my great-grandfather) and Willie Harriet Riddle Smith (my 2nd great-grandmother); Front: Tim D. Smith (my father), Ginger R. Smith (me), Darrel E. Smith (my grandfather). Taken 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

L to R: Reba Fox Smith (my great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me),  Melvina West Fox (my 2nd great-grandmother), Tim D. Smith (my father), Darrel E. Smith. Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

Most all of my sets of 2^nd great-grandparents lived in Arkansas with the exception of the Bensons. I’m pretty lucky because the Arkansas death certificates started about 1914. I can actually probably take my ancestry back another generation to 3^rd or even 4^th great-grandparents just by using death certificate research!

As I said in my last post about requesting death certificates from the Arkansas Department of Health, it can become quite addicting and difficult to keep up with all of the requests and processing of incoming certificates. I try to space them out. I have employed the following two tables to help me with my research. They track my progress in securing and processing death certificates and obituaries. From looking at these tables I can see from a glance what I am missing.

From the tables I have filled out below, I can see that I have the obituaries and death certificates of 8 of my 16 great-grandparents. I am half way there! The obituaries I obtained either from family members or from various newspapers. My cousin, Doris Hamblin Smith, sent me copies of a bunch of Smith family obituaries in 2010 before she passed away.

In order to understand what the headers Scanned?, Transcribed?, FTF Notes?, and FTF Source? refer to, you must first know my genealogy work flow:

1.       Scan and save obituary and death certificate as a PDF, TIF, and JPG file

2.       Transcribe and save to Word document or Notepad File

3.       Copy the Transcript to the notes file for that person in my genealogy software

4.       Enter the Birth, Death, Burial, Occupation, Marital, etc facts into my genealogy software, including the parents' names

5.       Create a source and attach to the Facts (some call these "Events")

Nos. 3 and 4 are included under the FTF Notes heading in the table. FTF stands for “Family Tree File.”

As I collect more obituaries and death certificates, I can  update this table. I already know which death certificate I plan to order next – that of Rosalie Putman. However, since 6 of the remaining 8 died in Arkansas, I can go ahead and order them all at once.

Dora King died in 1912 in Missouri. I have not found a death record for her yet, probably because she died before deaths were required to be recorded. Family stories say she died of a snake bite. I might be able to find a death notice for her in a local newspaper. But I've found this to be difficult; or at least time consuming when you don't know the month and day. 

Barney Benson died while visiting his son in California. I have not yet ordered a death certificate from California, so this will be my first experience.

Obituary Resources
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	yes	yes	yes	yes
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	No	No	No	No
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	No	No	No	No
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Death Certificates
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	No	No	No	No
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	No	No	No	No
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

How do you stay organized? Does your genealogy work flow look like mine? If not, how does it differ? How is it similar? I’m looking forward to hearing how other people process the obituaries and death certificates they receive. 

Follow-up Friday 17 Feb 2012

Here's a list of goals I set two weeks ago in my Motivation Monday post of February 6, 2012:

1.     Process the Thomas Hume papers I photographed from UNC’s Southern Historical Collection.

2.     Process the O’Neal family papers I received from my new O’Neal cousin (determined by DNA test)

3.     Enter information on the William Godwin family of Escambia County, Alabama (whose descendant was determined to be a match to our line of Godwins from NC)

4.     Process the Barton family Find-A-Grave photos from Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas that a volunteer uploaded for me

And here is my progress so far:

1.     No progress

2.     No progress

3.     I believe I have all of the information on William’s descendants entered into my RootsMagic database. We got sidetracked by trying to find information about a John Godwin from North Carolina who was found on a Revolutionary War Roll. Evidently he fought with a bunch of people who moved with William Godwin from North Carolina to Georgia and then eventually they all settled in Escambia County, Alabama together. It also seems that Zilla Godwin who married Jesse Baggett (one of the men who was on the Revolutionary War Roll and who moved to GA and then to AL with the others) might have been the same woman who was the daughter of Richard Godwin and Zillah Thomas who moved from Sampson County, North Carolina to Hancock County, Georgia about the same time my Nathan Godwin moved to Indiana. We have always believed this Richard was related to our line of Godwins, but  have been unable to determine how.

4.    Several Find A Grave memorials had already been created for my Barton ancestors in Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas back in 2008 by FAG volunteers. I requested that photos be taken of the headstones and was notified this week that my request had been fulfilled and the photos uploaded by a volunteer. I compared the information in the memorial biography to what was on the headstones from the photographs that the FAG volunteer took. However, the resolution on many of the photos rendered them unreadable, even if I downloaded them and tried to zoom. So I emailed the volunteer and asked her to email me copies of the originals. I thought that the ones that were uploaded to FAG somehow lost resolution when they were uploaded. Unfortunately the ones she emailed me were just too low quality of resolution that I could not zoom to read them. They were 50-150kb in size. Maybe if she had set her camera to a little higher setting I would have been able to zoom in better? Oh well. Also, I’ve been struggling with creating a citation for my FAG entries in my RootsMagic database and although I finally settled upon some standard text, there was only one field in my RootsMagic source template that I could squeeze all of this text into. So I created a custom source template in my RM software in which I could enter the deceased person's name, memorial number, memorial creator's name and date, etc as separate fields. This made me much less stressful about creating my FAG source citations!

5.     My Mother’s Family  Finder DNA results came back, so of course I got distracted with those. She had 214 matches! Which for Family Finder is a LOT! Of those 214 matches about 90 of them were matches she and I had in common. She has a lot of 3^rd cousins as well and suprisingly, I have already received emails from 2 of her matches requesting information! (usually you have to beg and plead with people to get them to respond to YOUR emails). Unfortunately I have not been able to find a connection to them yet.

6.     Learned more about my JONES family. My 2^nd great-grandmother was Emily Jones and she married John Riley Lasiter. Jones was a possible common surname with one of my Mother’s DNA matches, so I did some research to see if I could find more information about Emily Jones. I found Emily and John Lasiter living in Madison Co., AR on the 1870 census report and then I found the family of Thomas and Saphronia Jones also living in Madison Co., AR in 1870. Going back to 1860, I found Thomas and Saphronia Jones with a daughter Emily C Jones who matched up to my Emily Lasiter. Based on the places of birth listed for the children of Thomas and Saphronia Jones on the 1860 census, I was able to determine that the family moved from TN to AR about 1851 and that Thomas and Saphronia Jones were probably married between 1840 and 1847 when Sally Ann Jones, the first child listed on the 1860 census, was born. I did a search on Ancestry.com in the Tennessee Marriage records for Thomas J Jones and found it right away: Thomas J Jones to Safrona Phelps, 18 Dec 1844, Davidson Co., TN. I followed it up with an 1850 Davidson Co., TN census record for Thos J Jones, 30 years old, Sophrona Jones, 26 years old, Sarah Jones, 4 years old, and Tennessee Jones, 1 year old. I have now taken my tree back another generation and learned of a new family name and location from which to start searching in!

Motivation Monday - 6 Feb 2012

I am falling really behind in my genealogy and blogging these past couple of weeks. I haven't had much focus either. I think I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. That's normal for February, right?

Ok, so let's get back on track. Here's what I have on my plate these days:

1. Process the 60 pages of genealogy papers I copied from the Thomas Hume papers at UNC's Southern Historical Collection last week. In order to make heads or tails of it, I need to reconstruct Thomas Hume's genealogy and find the connection to the Godwin family of Nansemond Co., VA and then try to understand the connection with Mildred Holliday who wrote a LOT about the Godwin family. Oh yeah and then I have to determine if my line of Godwins descend from this line!!!
2. Process the O'Neal family wills, photos and genealogies that one of my Family Finder matches sent to me. (Yes, a confirmed "cousin!") My match is in her 80s so if I want to learn more information about the O'Neal family I better ask sooner rather than later!
3. Finish entering information on the William Godwin who married Pheriby who moved to Georgia and then settled in Alabama in the 1800s. One of his descendants took the 12-marker Y-DNA test and came back as a 100% match to the group of Godwins that my line descends from. A 12-marker match is not enough to prove we have a common ancestor, however, this tester does not match any other Godwin/Goodwin in the project. We hope a higher marker test will be performed in the near future. I have also been entering data about a similar William who is often confused with this one. He married Winnefred (maiden name thought to be Farabee). You can see why there might be confusion. Although this William lived and died in Johnston Co., NC in 1845, his heirs settled in Dale Co., Alabama. 
4. Process the new Find-A-Grave photos for the Barton Family that someone took and posted for me from Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas. 

I really need to stop starting new projects until I finish existing projects. And I need to process items that I obtain from libraries, archives and from other researchers or family members. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this problem though!

Follow-up Friday – Jan 20, 2012

I definitely got sidetracked this week and my surname research took an entirely different turn, but for the better! Even though I have committed myself to setting and following certain goals for the new year, I encountered one of the many quagmires involved with genealogy research and we are only in our 3rd week of the year. I set a few goals for particular surnames that I wanted to research, either because I wanted to learn more about them or because they had presented a brick wall. But I also committed to finding connections to the 178 autosomal DNA matches I have acquired in the 6 months since taking the Family Finder test.

I know I haven't written much about the test and all that is involved in working with my matches (that is also on my goals list - to write more about my experience). But anyone who has taken the test knows that 1) your tree has to be pretty well built up 2) that includes your collateral lines and 3) you will inevitably spend more time exchanging more family and historical data once a match is determined which means building up your tree some more, entering more sources, transcribing more records, etc. but the bottom line is that you will get sidetracked into looking at several different surnames at a time, especially if you have any of those annoying common surnames that you will inevitably have in common with 75% of your matches like Jones, Smith, and Johnson!

So long story short, even though last week I was researching my Ward and Joy, Peters, and Dunlap families and still had a bunch of Ward and Joy information to input into my database, this week I was researching my HARDIN and TINSLEY families!

It started off with one little email to a match who had a few surnames in common with me. I'm not even sure why I picked him. I guess I was bored last weekend and just randomly emailed him. (Now you see why I don't write too many posts about this - wouldn't want the method to my madness getting out). Anyways, he sent me his ahnentafel and told me that we connected through my 6th great-grandmother, Clara Hardin who was born 1793 in Kentucky. She married John Carman LaRue in Maury County, Tennessee in 1811. Clara Hardin's great-grandfather, Mark Hardin, born sometime in the late 1600s, was my match's 7th great-grandfather and my 9th great-grandfather, making my match and I 8th cousins, twice removed!

So I spent the first half of the week (Monday was a holiday for me for MLK's Birthday and then I was out sick one day) looking on the internet at all the conflicting information about where and when said Mark Hardin was born and who his possible parents were. I reviewed sources and analysis and research reports. And then I found out that my cousin Kay Haden (you might remember her because she was featured on the FGS blog as the first registrant for the FGS conference in Birmingham!) is also descended from Mark Hardin! She had done a lot of research on him when she lived in AL years earlier and sent me some stuff to look over.

Then my match and I used this not-always-so-handy-tool called the "In common with" filter on our ftDNA homepage to see who else we both matched to and it came up with two names. I emailed them thinking they might be descendants of Mark Hardin as well. One of them wrote me back and although she did not have and Hardins in her ancestry that she knew of, we did find not one, but TWO connections via the TINSLEY and HILL lines!!! How cool is that???

I never really did much research on my Tinsley line because frankly, there was already tons of information out there on the internet and there looked to be two or three very capable researchers who had posted their research on the internet already, so I figured they had it covered and I could use their research as a guide when the (free) time came. But we know it's never that easy, so of course I had to perform my own research. Including starting an annotated bibliography of the secondary sources on the Tinsley family that came into Virginia in the 1600s which included my ancestor, Thomas Tinsley.

It didn't take long to find the connection to her Tinsley line, even though it was several generations back. It turned out we were 9th cousins 1x removed! She had sent me the name of her Ancestry.com online family tree and I was able to find the link to it by running a google search on it. Her tree was very easy to navigate in the pedigree view and by going through each of her lines I found a 2nd connection to Robert Hill (1678-1766) and Tabitha Brown Green (1690-1765)! My lines goes through their daughter Ann Hill who married John Steed and my match's line goes through their daughter Tabitha Hill who married David Chapman.

I have to admit, I'm getting pretty good at finding connections using genealogical tools like Ancestry.com's online family trees! It does take patience though. Oh and with this connect, we were 8th cousins 2x removed.

So as you can see, I'm a pretty well-rounded genealogist. Or you might say I get bored easily. But I don't think this is a bad thing. Last year I was more focused on one of two things and this year I plan to make more connections and get back to building my tree up some more.

So not bad for a first 3 weeks. Last week I added some new information and worked on breaking down a couple of brick walls. This week I opened two new can of worms and got my brain's juices flowing and started pushing myself to think about how to deal with what I find on the internet, how to resolve conflicts, how to cite my sources, how to deal with not being able to make the report I want to make with my gen software (that's never ending right?), how to find books, and how to start thinking about the historical context of the area that my ancestors lived in. Oh yeah and how cool DNA is! And did you notice that my test seems to be really sensitive? They guarantee to only go back to 5th cousins, but most of my matches have been 8th cousins. I think that's pretty cool!