strickln@ihlpa.UUCP (Stricklen) (01/03/86)
I am rather new to genealogical research, so I thought I would start with something that appeared simple. I started tracing back the origins of my mother's maiden name, Whitney, as I thought it would be fairly well documented. A great-uncle of mine had accumulated some information on the last few generations before he died ten years. I started with this. I then got a membership with the New England Historic Genealogical Society and ordered some works following various branches of the Whitney family that emigrated from England. My great-uncle traced back the Whitney to one Jesse M. Whitney born in 1812 who married a woman named Anna in Kentucky. My mother has a ledger book showing money he and his sons earned dating from 1858 to 1864. Some of the entries show he worked repairing clocks. A three-volume work I borrowed from the Genealogical Society has an entry for a Jesse B. Whitney, born in Vermont in 1810 who married a woman who bore him one son. The book says he disappeared shortly after the son's birth. It also says his sisters had been in touch with him once after he left and that he had gone to Ohio to be a "clock peddler." Illinois census records of 1850 show a Jesse B. Whitney with a wife Anna and children bearing the names my great-uncle has recorded living in Scott county. The census records show that this Jesse B. Whitney was both illiterate and born in Vermont. It would appear to me that these two persons are one in the same. With this link, I can use available material to show lineage in England back further than anyone would want. I am afraid that a "more professional" genealoger would want more proof than the circumstancial information I have. Is this true? If I do need more substantiation, it would likely be difficult. If this is the same person, he may have gone to great lengths to hide his tracks from his first wife (whom he likely never divorced) and to hide his past from his second wife (to whom he likely lied through his teeth). Can anyone give me some advice? Thanks, Steve Stricklen AT&T Bell Laboratories ihnp4!ihlpa!strickln
hosking@convexs.UUCP (01/06/86)
> I am afraid that a "more professional" genealoger would want more proof than > the circumstancial information I have. Is this true? If I do need more > substantiation, it would likely be difficult. If this is the same person, > he may have gone to great lengths to hide his tracks from his first wife > (whom he likely never divorced) and to hide his past from his second wife > (to whom he likely lied through his teeth). Can anyone give me some advice? That's part of the whole game. Without making a few guesses such as this, many leads turn into dead ends. (Of course, you may also head down the wrong path a few (thousand) times, too.) The important thing is to document such assumptions, and why they were made. You may later find other information which proves or disproves your theories. If you make a clear distinction between what you KNOW to be true, what you THINK you know, and what MIGHT be true, and keep records of how, where, and when you derived this info, you'll probably be very glad you did some day. Other people who you share your info with will also be a lot happier. Obviously, it's very difficult to be 100% sure of many things, so it's all the more important to keep records of how you derived the information. Doug Hosking Convex Computer Corp. Richardson, TX {allegra, ihnp4, uiucdcs}!convex!hosking