Genealogical, D. N. A., and Historical Family Research

Finding Your Ancestors

I have never written a blog entry about “How to Perform Family Research”. Well, I am now. As with most of my blog entries, I’ll have to edit it.

I. Genealogy Research

You will never find everything you seek. But you can find something. After looking for over twenty years, I think I have a few things I can share. Maybe you have already used these methods. 

A. Interview elders in your family still living. Write down their family stories, or better yet -- ask them to write down those stories. Ask about old photographs and newspaper clippings that mention the family. Is the family mentioned in any book? All this background material should be helpful in deciding where you should research next. Carefully document and cite each record you find. That is write “Great Uncle ABC said XYZ on DATE, at LOCATION. This is recorded [cite the sources].” Next seek out cooborating evidence. Seek out other source material that can prove what your relatives have said. People’s memories might fail, or they might remember incorrectly. Maybe they were told the story incorrectly.

 B.  Research the usual genealogical material. You have probably heard where some family members lived. Look up old census, probate, and marriage records. Create a story for each person. Follow them from one census to the next, from one location to another. Most of this information exists online, now.

 Research military records for known soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guard personnel, and search for both for marines and merchant marines. My father was in the Field Artillery during World War Two. If you can find the units they belonged to, research that military unit. You can discover the histories of many historic military units online. Researching is a lot easier than it used to be.

 We have one relative (first cousin to my great-great grandma) who was a Methodist minister. The United Methodists often write down the history of the church in each state. I found a photograph of that minister in a book, as well as a short history of him and his family. 

 That same Methodist family had a couple of generations earlier, lived in Cashel, County Tipperary, Ireland. We discovered that information by utilizing the genealogical pages on the internet. Someone in New Zealand was researching the same family, and had copied down Irish records of that same family. They had written and asked for church records in Cashel, and found the local church had kept records of christenings for centuries. They had a record of the birth of my ancestor was christened there in 1745. This other person from half way around the world helped me greatly. Their family had left Ireland a hundred years after my ancestors had left, and thus still had family stories of that move, stories that had been forgotten by our branch of the same family. I had heard that family was either English or Irish. It turns out we descended from an English family that had migrated to Ireland. Our family story about them was correct, but partially forgotten. Our family story said they were either English or Irish. The truth was they were an English family who had migrated to Ireland. Many family stories are like that – they contain truths but they are also incomplete. Use genealogical message boards – you might get lucky and discover a long-lost relative from over the sea who knows more than you do. 

  C. There is a special case of researching American Indian peoples. You have to be very lucky to find them if your ancestor married out of the tribe, and moved off. Some people have tried to say they descend from a tribe that disappeared into the hills only to be rediscovered in the 1870’s. Many tribes were removed from their homes and forced to migrate hundreds of miles. Known tribal members will not welcome outsiders coming and telling them they are also tribal members. Each have their own criteria for tribal membership. We have family stories that we have Cherokee blood. There are groups out there who do nothing by seek to prove those family stories are lies. Do NOT go up to tribal members boldly telling them that you too, are Cherokee! Humbly mention it at an opportune time. Let them know if you have documentation of it or not. DO NOT initiate a tit-for-tat response. Let it go, and move on. They might tear into you without proof and call you a liar.

 You have other groups out there who believe without proof of any kind that they are “Indian”, yet are as white as freshly washed and bleached sheets. Both extremists should be questioned. Seek the middle road. Both extremists can be wrong. Seek evidence elsewhere. There are plenty of old Cherokee rolls. Contrary to what some will tell you, not everyone is listed. Contrary to what others will tell you, saying you have family stories of having a Cherokee ancestor isn’t enough, either. Trying to say “go the middle path” or rejecting both extremes has made enemies for me from both camps. Do what you know is right. Learn the difference between evidence and proof.

 Your family story is evidence, not proof -- of possible Cherokee ancestry. You use your evidence to point you in the right direction to find further evidence. You can accumulate more and more evidence. If your evidence doesn’t amount to proof, you call it “circumstantial evidence”. It might still be a “coincidence”. But the more circumstantial evidence you can accumulate, the less likely it can still be considered only a coincidence.

 D. After you have old documents, census records, probate information or other pertinent material, you’re ready for the next step.

Memorize these five steps -- 1. NAMES; 2. DATES; 3. LOCATIONS; 4. EVENTS; and 5. CITATIONS.
Discover the names of your ancestors and close relatives. Find out, as close as you can, the exact date and location, of their birth, marriage, and death. Cite the name of the sources for all of this information. Organize this information however you like. Make it easy for yourself and others to follow.

 II. DNA Research

There is a newer and controversial branch of research dealing with DNA. It is controversial because it is still in its infancy. Many of us are confused by this. I was confused for a long time, about the difference between an “x-chromosomes” and “autosomal chromosomes”.

Every human descends from a male and a female. We call the male our father and the female our mother. The person is one generation, and his or her parents is a second generation. Since each human descends from two previous humans, the number of our direct ancestors doubles every generation. So in 1 generation we have 2 ancestors. In 2 generations we have 4, and in three generations we have 8. So in ten generations we have (get out the old calculator if you don’t believe me) -- we have 1,024 direct ancestors. If our ancestor averaged 40 years of age when they produced the child that was out direct ancestor, that covers only four hundred hears! That would mean for many of us to find a direct ancestor in common with another person, which is proven by DNA research, we’d have to sift through over a thousand ancestors each, just to get back to 1700 alone. And that’s a BEST CASE SCENARIO. Few if any of us will have parents as old as 40 years of age for ten straight generations.

I have said in the past that there are three types of DNA. Well, I was wrong. The x-chromosome is not autosomal DNA as I had once thought. There are four types of DNA that should concern us. They are separate. Our DNA consists of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. The first twenty-two of these pairs compose our autosomal DNA. 

We inherit these twenty-two strands from both of our parents. On the average, we should inherit about 50% of our autosomal DNA from each parent. However we might inherit 70% from one parent, and 30% from the other. But this material will tell us of all our ancestors. If you are bi or tri-racial – this material can prove it.

The twenty-third pair comprise both the x and y chromosome in males, and two x-chromosome strands in females. The y-chromosome DNA which is passed down from father to son only. My sister will not carry this. She carries no y-chromosome DNA at all.  This tells us about the origin men’s father’s. This will tell me about my Hawkins surname only. 

Males inherit the x-chromosomal DNA information from their mother only. Females do not inherit ANY y-chromosomal DNA from their fathers. They inherit instead two x-chromosomal strands, one from their father and one from their mother.

If you are female, to find out about your father, you must have your brother or your father take this test for you. If you have no brothers and your father’s DNA is inaccessable – perhaps a paternal uncle exists. So in ten generations, we will discover we have 1,024 parents, half male and half female. The y-chromosome DNA test will tell us something about one ancestor in each generation, or put another way, slightly less than one percent of our ancestral tree, when only 10 generations are considered. 

The last type of DNA is your mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. This DNA is passed down from a mother to all her children, including males. Thus I have mtDNA from my mother. But since female maiden names are often forgotten the further back in time we go, it is possible will never discover any “original” maiden name. The same is true here – our mtDNA will tell us something about 10/1024ths, or 1/102.4 of our ancestors. But it can not find her surname. It will give us a degree of knowledge about her nationality or race, and perhaps a little other information about this or that. It will not tell us a lot more than that.

III. Historical Research

You probably want to know more about your ancestors than just their names, important dates in their lives, or something about their families. 

There are many things I would have never known had I not researched history in the counties where my ancestors lived. I have several ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and one we know of was killed in it. But we did not start out with these things.

It is very important you always map a name to a date to a location and an event at that location at that time. Many tribes migrated from the east to Oklahoma or other states. Can your family be found along that migration route during the time of their migration? Does your family have surnames of known tribal members? An answer of “YES” to these questions is NOT proof -- But it can add to the circumstantial evidence that you collect.

Another source of information can be county histories. Many counties decided to record their histories. They got family members to tell stories of their ancestors and their trials and tribulations in pioneering their homes. The family of one great uncle wrote about themselves. At the end of the article they wrote; “Oscar Richey is a direct descendant of Sequoyah”. Oscar was one of Grandma’s brothers. I had asked Aunt Lorena (dad’s sister) to write about our relationship to Sequoyah and she wrote she was told (by her mother, my grandma) my great-great grandma (Harriet-Guess/Gist- Brown -- her great grandma) was “either Sequoyah’s niece or great-niece”. Dad had a story about that, too and I recorded and saved it. He said his grandma (my great grandma) thumbed through his “Oklahoma History” text book and pointed to the “picture of an Indian” in it and said to him, “did you know you were related to him?” When I finally got interested in his story he was older, and I found an old Oklahoma History text book that contained the famous drawing of Sequoyah. I asked him if this was the photo his grandma was talking about. All he ever answered was “I just don’t remember”. So I have collected three stories – one that says we descend from Sequoyah, another that says we are related to Sequoyah, and a third that says we are related to “an Oklahoma Indian” who’s drawing was found in an Oklahoma History book. Each story is slightly different. As an honest researcher, I can’t promote one story over the others. I can simply mention all three. All three stories are EVIDENCE – NONE OF THEM were proof. All three stories are FAMILY STORIES – label them as such when you tell them to your grandkids. 

There is also a story written in a book entitled “Land of the Lake” where there is a story of a John Guess/Gist from E Tn and it says he “was some kin of Sequoyah”. Our family story also says we come from East Tennessee where John lived. Our Harriet Guess said on some census records she was born in Tennessee. She was born about 1817 or 18 per various census records. Another of the Alabama Gist’s (Christopher, b. 1804) also said he was b. in Tennessee. So here is more evidence from a separate source stating a Gist family was related “somehow” to Sequoyah. That’s pretty much what our stories say! Put this story with others and properly cite it.  There is a story about a “David Smith” who also lived at one time in Lawrence County, Alabama. That’s where our family lived once they moved to Alabama. They lived there at the same time David Smith lived there. He moved to Missouri. His son wrote a little something about their family. He states David’s mother was a Gist/Guess and that they also were related to Sequoyah. So many branches of this same family independently claim they are related to Sequoyah. So we have three independent stories from my close family, and two other sources from more independent sources, all stating a kinship to Sequoyah. That’s quite a bit of circumstantial evidence. NEVER overstate your evidence. Don’t say “we descend from so-and-so . . .” without proof. State your sources, and your evidence, and leave it at that.

Research to discover various branches of your family. Then research those branches. You might research many branches and find nothing at all. Then after a year or two of getting discouraged, you might discover a pearl.

If you want to find your real family, continue with historical research once you have exhausted your genealogical sources. Your genealogical family is like a skeleton. You must put muscle on those bones, and that is what historical research does.