Chasing the Past

My goal for this year is to go back through everything I have and prove what relationships I can. Then, I can formulate some good research questions for moving forward.

At first glance, my fan chart looks pretty good. But I’m not sure I have proof of the relationships the further out we go.

I am very confident in the first five generations. Somewhat confident in 6 and 7.

However, I have a lot of work to do going back and rechecking. I feel it’s important to revisit sometimes just because there’s so much new information available. Most recently, companies using AI to read handwriting. This is absolutely game changing for me.

Already, I’ve found some information on my Smith line. I’ve found, at least all that were living, Richmond’s siblings in his brother’s probate record.

According to Green Smith’s probate record of 1860, he had the following siblings living; Nelson, Nancy, Cuddy, John and Richmond. We also know from this record that Nancy’s husband was Thomas Johnson and he was deceased.

Was I the first to find this record? No. One of the reasons this is game changing for me is that I don’t have to look through every single record any more. It’s not that I mind doing it, it’s that I am easily distracted. So as I’m looking at records, I’ll see something interesting and next thing you know I’ve spent hours reading/researching about a person/family I don’t even know. The use of AI will help me to keep my focus. At least a little bit.

But back to the topic at hand. My first goal is to go back and make sure I have clear, convincing evidence of my ancestors and their connections to me. The newer research will be easier as I kept better records. The older research will require me to basically find it again because I didn’t keep the best citations.

Here’s to something old and hopefully something new.