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.

Tenants in Common

I'm trying to use deeds to help separate information for two James Crawfords who resided in Preble County Ohio at the same time. They both owned parts of section 14, Township 7 North, Range 2 East.

As discussed in my post, James Crawford of Preble County, I use the selling of the land to figure out which James Crawford owned the land. I also use their wife's name to help me keep them straight. James and Sally are my ancestors while James and Martha may or may not be related.

Little Clues

Do you ever go back to a source you've likely used before and discover a very tiny tidbit of information that changes one of your assumptions about an ancestor. Well, I did last night. I was browsing the Internet for Madison County, Kentucky resources while watching the webinar, Trails of Daniel Boone and Other Western Travelers by J. Mark Lowe.

I came across the book, Glimpses of Historic Madison County, Kentucky on Internet Archive. When I searched the contents of the book for Crawford, I found a paragraph about Rev. James Crawford.

Photo Lineage

This week's #SaturdayNightGenealogyFun Challenge involves family photos.

How many generations do you have photographs or portraits of your ancestors and descendants? It can be any line...it just can't be broken!

When thinking about this, I realized that I have several generations of photos on my Crawford line.

Nelson G. Crawford (1808-1864)

Facebook Group Changes

Do you belong to a Facebook group? Perhaps you’ve seen a post (or two or more) about getting ‘removed’ from the group if you don’t participate? I started seeing these posts yesterday and was concerned, not only about all the genealogy groups I belong to, but also about the family groups I administer.

Since I was unsure what this meant as a group administrator, I did some research. The following articles helped me understand what is happening.

• Is Facebook Removing Inactive Members from Groups
• Facebook Updates Group Invites, Removing Ability to Automatically Add Members

 I then turned to Facebook to see if I could figure out how this is affecting the family groups I administer. The first thing I saw when I went to one of those groups was an announcement from Facebook, “Changes to Your Members List.”

James Crawford of Preble County

One of my brick walls is also one of my same name challenges. In her Jan. 16, 2019 podcast, Can You Identify Your Ancestor, Amy Johnson Crowe talks about finding information to make sure one is tracking the right person.

I've used most of her tips in my research, but I have one case where almost all of the details are the same.

	James Crawford	James Crawford
Birth	1770	1772
Residence 1820	Preble County OH	Preble County OH
Marriage Year	1793	1799
Marriage Place	Lincoln County KY	Garrard County KY
Occupation	Farmer	Farmer
Wife's name	Martha	Sally

The easiest way for me to distinguish these two men (and several other James Crawford) is by their wife's name. Since the wife's name often appears on a deed where land has been sold, I have used land records to help separate these two families.

Pauline E. Briles

Emporia Gazette
Wednesday, July 18, 1984
page 2 column 4-5

Film E1506

KS State Historical Society