Perspective

Does your genealogy have a brick wall FAN club that involves several branches of the surname along with lots of same name issues? Well, the parents of my ancestor, James Crawford (1772-1854) has such a FAN club.

While working with some other researchers from the FAN club, but unfortunately not my line, I created a 'traditional' time line outlining the information I had on the individuals in the FAN club.




This timeline included all of the facts for each individual in the time line. Thus, it is long. I used color coding to identify various lines and counties.



Even though the data is here, this form of timeline hasn't helped me advance my research.

Yesterday, I started a different version of a time line. This timeline has the different family groups across the top and the year down the side. In the intersecting cell, I'm recording brief info about the event and the county/state where they lived. I'm using color coding for the locations.





For this timeline, I limited the people to the following:

• two James Crawfords of Preble County (James/Sally and James/Martha)
• their suspected mothers: Rebecca Crawford and Mary Crawford (md Moore)
• suspected uncles of one of the James Crawfords: James/Rebecca and William/Elizabeth
• suspected siblings: Sarah Crawford (William Sellers) and Mary Crawford (James Sellers)
• step-sons of my ancestor: Henry Duggins and William Duggins
• daughter of my ancestor: Polly Crawford md John Stoner

By looking at the information in this format, I've been able to track the land transactions. This has allowed me to quickly see which tracts of land only had one transaction (purchase or sell), allowing me to look for the other transaction.  I'm also seeing other 'holes' in my research of these people. Hopefully, as I fill in those 'holes', I will find records tying these Crawford families together.

I'm thankful I tried looking at the information from a different perspective!