Source Mystery

Do you like to dig into old deeds and court records to figure out family ties? If so, has the closure of libraries and Family History Centers impacted your ability to access those records? My answer to both questions is YES. Of course, I could be using Ancestry databases to research other branches of my tree, but the pull to research my Crawford line is very strong -- and that means accessing Virginia records.

Even if the Family History Centers were open, I'm under a county 'Stay at Home' order. Thus, I'm digging thru my files from previous Virginia research to see if I can make pull any new information from that research.

Out of curiosity, I searched my Crawford files to see if I had any records mentioning Overton, Tennessee. (One of my brother's BigY matches is to a Crawford family from Overton County, Tennessee.) Since I've never done any Tennessee research, I didn't expect to find much. Thus, I was surprised when I found a document titled: Crawford Families of Virginia and Overton County Tennessee.

What I have is a scanned image of a photocopy.

Crawford Marriages

Have you ever felt the need to go back thru your genealogy research hoping that some new insight can be obtained from those notes and records located years ago? That's where I'm at with my Crawford research. I started with some marriage records from Augusta County, Virginia.

Vogt John & T. William Kethley, Augusta County Marriages, 1748-1850 (N.p.: Iberian Publishing Company, 1986).

While reviewing these records, I found that I already had most of these Crawfords in my database. However, I often was missing their spouse and/or documentation of their marriage.

In the process of re-looking at these records, I also took the time to find them on FamilySearch so I could see what other researchers might have on these families.

Below are my notes for Crawford males and females married in Augusta County prior to 1801.

Augusta County Marriages 1748-1850

Crawford.VA.030

by John Vogt & T. William Kethley
Iberian Publishing Company, np, 1986

Only transcribing marriages prior to 1801

page 66 - Men’s Names

Alexander Crawford [FS LZN5-951 - grandson of Alexander & Mary (McPHeeters) Crawford] & Rachel Lessley [Leslie FS 2W3B-9BV] - 20 Feb 1793 consent William Bell

yDNA - BIG News!

In your genealogy research, have you ever suspected a relationship but never could find evidence to support your suspicions?

Well that's been the case with my James Crawford research and I now have yDNA evidence to support that suspicion!

My brothers yDNA has been placed in the R-Y88686 haplogroup. My first match was to descendants of Edward Crawford of Tennessee. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to verify that our two lines resided in the same area at the same time let alone discover a family connection.

With today's notice of a new Big Y match, I now have a match with a familiar line. The new match is a descendant of James and Rebecca (Anderson) Crawford.

Hey Crawford Researchers - Let's Get This Right!

Anyone who has been doing genealogical research will eventually run into 'same name' issues, where two people of the same name are found in the same vicinity or same records. With my Crawford research, my same name struggle has been with my ancestor, James Crawford (1772-1854).

James is a common given name in Crawford research and my James seems to be surrounded by other James Crawfords during his adult life. Even though most of the time, I've been able to separate out the various families, I haven't been able to find siblings or parents for my James Crawford.

However, I have encountered a lot of what I'm going to call 'latchkey' trees. With pre-1800 Crawford research in Virginia and surrounding areas, it is fairly easy to find published family histories for various Crawford lines. This would include David Crawford, Col. William Crawford and brothers, Alexander and Patrick Crawford. Since given names like James, John and Mary are found in many Crawford families, it is tempting to take a proven ancestor named James, John or Mary Crawford and 'latch' onto one of these families to identify parents of our ancestor.

With my Crawford research centered in Kentucky and Virginia, I encounter a lot of trees for these early Kentucky Crawford families connecting to Alexander Crawford and his wife Mary McPheeters or to Alexander's brother Patrick. Some of these trees match the information in the well documented book, Descendants of Alexander and Mary McPheeters Crawford by Amanda Forbes. Unfortunately, many trees lead back to Alexander and Mary McPheeters Crawford when the documents for the child in the tree contradicts known documentation for the family of Alexander Crawford.

Chasing Edward

When doing your genealogy research do you sometimes feel like you are going down a rabbit hole or chasing your tail? That's what I sometimes feel like when I research descendants of a Crawford who is not my ancestor.

So yesterday, I was chasing my tail by researching the children of Edward Crawford (1762-1826) of Overton, Tennessee. Even though I don't have any paper research connecting my Crawford line to Edward or even to Overton County, Tennessee, there is a DNA connection. Descendants of Edward Crawford have also done a Big Y DNA test and we have been assigned the same branch of the Big Y Haplotree: R-Y88686.

When I first received these DNA results, I couldn't find a connection between my Crawford family in Garrard County, Kentucky and Edward Crawford of Overton County, Tennessee. However, I remembered that I had found an Edward Crawford in the 1795 and 1796 tax lists for Madison County, Kentucky. Wondering whether the Edward Crawford in the tax lists of Madison County, KY is the same Edward Crawford who died in Overton County, TN.

Thus, I've been researching the children and grandchildren of Edward Crawford of Overton County, Tennessee -- hoping to find some clue that would lead back to Kentucky. As I was finding records for Edward's children and their family, I was comparing my findings to the Edward Crawford [LD9R-8KW] family on the FamilySearch tree. During this comparison, I discovered that other researchers believe that David Crawford [9KMN-WNK], son of Edward and Abigail (Trowbridge) Crawford was born in Clark County, Kentucky.

Crawford yDNA

Did you know you can get a yDNA haplogroup from your Ancestry DNA? Until an administrator of the Crawford yDNA project posted directions on the Clan Crawford Association Ancestry and DNA Research Forum Facebook group, I didn't know anything about this.

To do this, one needs to download Ancestry DNA and save the ZIP file in a known location. The file needs to remain 'zipped'.

The blog post, Updated Method to Get yDNA Haplogroup from AncestryDNA Results explains the process.

The second step is to use the MorleyDNA.com Y-SNP Subclade Preditor. After giving consent for the use of the data, a screen will open to upload the zipped file containing AncestryDNA results

Once the data is uploaded, a screen will appear prompting you to prove you are not a robot and again asking for consent to use the data.

The processing is quick and opens a screen showing the results. Look for the box highlighted in green on the left side of the screen. That is the predicted haplogroup.

If you wish to share the findings with other CRAWFORD researches, you may either post your results as a comment to the Facebook post or as a comment to this blog. Please include the following information in your comment.Earliest known ancestor

• Birthdate and place if known
• Deathdate and place if known
• Spouse's name
• Copy of information in the green box on the left (your haplogroup)

If your yDNA comes back any variety of R1b, I would be very interested in seeing if our research connects.

Alway Learning - Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Do you like to pick up tips and tricks from other researchers? I know I do! I especially like those surveys or challenges that cause me to look at my data in a different way. That's one of the things I like about Randy Seaver's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" challenges. Not only does Randy challenge me to look at my data differently - but he often provides the instructions on how to do it.

That is especially true of last night's challenge.

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3)  Tell us what the top 20  surnames are in your database and, if possible, how many entries.  How many different surnames are in your family tree?

4)  Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on a Facebook post.

Since like Randy, I use RootsMagic 7 to manage my genealogy research, I simply have to follow his directions to figure out my top 20 surnames.

So within RootsMagic 7, I pulled down the REPORTS menu and clicked on LISTS for the type of report. Then I just scrolled down the right side of the window to locate the SURNAME STATISTICS LIST.