I started working on family geneology about 7 years ago when I went TDY to Salt Lake City and had the opportunity to stop into the Mormon Family History Center there. It wasn't the first time I had wanted to start, but it was the first time someone showed me how to look up family members in old censuses. Naturally, the first line everybody does is their own last name. I found a straight line from my father, his father, etc back to one Daniel Kingsley (my GGG Grandfather). At that point, there was no more to find. When I got home from that trip, I started asking around the family for further information about the genealogy. The massive amount of information download was incredible. Both the maternal and paternal sides of the family had huge amounts of names, dates, and other info. The one thing that EVERYTHING was missing was substantiation.
Back to the paternal line of Kingsley. I was given names very far back. Beyond Daniel Kingsley, I was given the names of (in ascending order) Seth, Seth, Calvin, Nathan, and 3 Samuels. I contacted several people who had info on the Seth, Calvin, Nathan line, but they had no information on a Daniel as the son of either Seth, or Seth, Jr. After long and diligent struggles to connect that line, I got fed up with it and decided that maybe it really wasn't the right family. I put the Kingsley line on the back burner and started working some other lines.
My father was blessed with the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with his grandmother later in life. "GG", born in 1907, passed away in 2006. She was a faithful, stalwart record keeper. She had recorded the family history from the time she was young, including one family reunion in 1931 and a long, handwritten record that was presented to her parents on their anniversary. As she was his maternal grandmother, she had nothing on Kingsleys, but she had tons on the Myers and Loop families. She even tied into the Morse/Moss and Bartholomew lines from the Conneticut area. Those lines are very well established in the DAR and such.
My mother's family was also somewhat a mystery, but through hard work, research, and an insane amount of luck (I found a whole book, literally) that had Andrew J Fancher (my GGG Grandfather) as the LOWEST generation in the line of Fanchers and 6 generations past him (Thanks to William Hoyt Fancher and the Cabinet Press). The Parker side of my genealogy chart (the bottom 4th) has been somewhat neglected in comparison. It is not from lack of desire, but it seems like the more I work on the other lines, the more stuff I get that I have to verify.
As I mentioned in my last entry, we just got to Germany so I left a LOT of the paperwork behind. If you know anything about military movers, you understand why I wouldn't bring such priceless things, especially overseas. If you don't know anything about military movers, just understand that I have a lot of explaining to do about a certain antique chair that my grandfather refurnished from an old lodge that closed. See, he did about 20 chairs and sold a bunch. The remainder he had with an antique table he pulled out of his uncle-in-laws barn loft and refinished. I had that table until about 3 months ago, when I shipped it (thanks Dad) to my sister with as many chairs as we could fit. That left 2, and he took another later. The last one we wanted to keep and it was the only thing I took that I would have regretted breaking. What do you know? It is destroyed. There may be a way to fix it, but I think it would have to be touched by the hand of God. Sorry guys.
Anyways, part of my genealogy research was purchasing a year subscription to Ancestry.com. It was a good thing for our family research. EXPENSIVE, but good. I still get emails from people asking about different members of my family tree. So, FINALLY to the missing link.
