On This Day in 2014

On April 23, 2014, I made a notation that I had stayed up way too late looking for Shorters and Robinsons. How do I know this? The app in which I made the notation has an OTD feature which I happened to look at this morning. 

I must have been looking for Eliza Jane Shorter and her husband Richard Robinson of Hawkins County, TN, who my mamaw believed were the parents of her mamaw, Louisa. 

What progress have I made in the past ten years? I don’t recall doing any sustained research on anyone in my father’s family until 2020. I spent my weekends catching up on genealogy chores (typing up notes, attaching and labeling photos, creating citations, etc.) and extending my research. Then in 2021, I turned my attention more fully to mamaw’s family who all lived in Hawkins and Grainger Counties for many decades in the 19th century. My mamaw and her sister did much of their research in the 1970s. I thought it would be fun to see what I could turn up with the tools and records that researchers have available in the age of online records and genetic genealogy. 

What have I turned up? I’m not sure. After three years of research and 200 pages of notes and thoughts, I feel that nothing that my mamaw believed about her family was true and that nobody was who they said they were. There are many DNA matches but they don’t make much sense and cousin marriage makes using many of the several DNA tools out there difficult to use. 

Recently, I’ve decided what I need to do is just start over. Not necessarily to all the research over from scratch, but to organize my research and conclusions chronologically beginning with the deaths of my great-grandparents in December 1944. 

If nothing else, it will give me something to do while I wait for the release of Ancestry’s new DNA ProTools. You can learn more about these upcoming tools from this RootsTech presentation (please note, you may need to be logged in to RootsTech to view the video)