Ancestor Profiles

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Recently I began putting together Ancestor Profiles for each of my ancestors. There are various templates for this out there but I decided to just make my own giving vital stats on each ancestor and listing burial, military information, parentage, children. The idea is to print these out and make an album of all of them eventually which can be left for future generations.

In the process, I am now back to my 4th great-grandparents and this has paid off big-time! It has been very helpful to revisit ancestors I haven’t looked at in many years and I am finding and doing fresh research on each as I go. What is really exciting - Just this week, I discovered a new set of 5th great-grandparents that had previously eluded me (a brick wall has crumbled!)

Mahula HOPSON ALLEN (1844 – 1875) was the 3rd wife of my Union Civil War ancestor William Neal ALLEN (1833 – 1917) of Marshall Co. KY. Their son William Franklin ALLEN was my 2nd great-grandfather. I knew Mahulda’s parents were Eldridge HOPSON (1822 – 1871) and Lavina KIRBY (ca. 1820 – after 1874) who were married on 6 April 1843 in Grainger Co. TN. Eldridge and Lavina made their home in Claiborne Co. TN, then moved to Lauderdale Co. AL, and finally Lyon Co. KY. I had researched Eldridge’s life somewhat and had even discovered his Bible record which had been passed down in the family. However, I had practically nothing on the KIRBY line. The bondman for their marriage was a James KIRBY but I had not found much on him other than he got in trouble with the law several times in Grainger Co.

But…..we have two more recent tools in our arsenal which helped me discover Lavina’s parentage and family. One is the Family Search Experimental Labs Full Text Search. This is a game-changer in the genealogical world. By using artificial intelligence, you can do an every word search on the millions of records in FamilySearch – deeds, wills, probates, court minutes, etc. Here is the link to it:  https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text

By using this tool, I discovered that Eldridge HOPSON was consistently involved with a group of KIRBYs who were all children of John KIRBY and Elizabeth LEFFEW. By then using DNA analysis (including AncestryPro and Thrulines), it became very evident that I descend from this couple who have to be Lavina KIRBY HOPSON’s parents. I would have never solved this without these two tools.

Have you been using FamilySearch Text Search and DNA tools to solve your long-standing brick walls? If not, I suggest doing so. Backstory Bloodhound, LLC is always here to help. Shoot me an e-mail at rick@backstorybloodhound.com

If you are interested in the Ancestor Profile idea, shoot me an e-mail and I will send you a sample of one I put together.