Finally, a breakthrough.... Followed by an avalanche.

[BuchananBiker]

So family oral history had us as Scottish. I was raised with it. I've embraced it. Then came a point when I wanted to prove it.
For the life of me, I couldn't get past my great-grand father. Finally, I got ahold of his fathers name. A little digging, a little prying, alot of praying.
Breakthrough! Then came rootsweb. After banging my head against a wall for forever, 19 generations were at my fingertips. From the American South, to Colonial America, to Ireland (for 4 generations), to Scottland. Back to 1338 where he trail ends.
I have no arms to claim that I can tell, but I don't care. I have it in black and white. I'll still want to do independent research to verify, but this is a darn fine start.

It's been a good day

[Destin_scot]

Congratulation...I can trace mine form the southern USA to the Carolinas and back to the isle of Sky, late 1700's to early 1800's...Other branches to mid 1600's in Virginia, and others to Ireland via Chicago, via southern Canada, via New York City in the early 1800's. Haven't had time to dig too much further though.

[J_Mimbs]

Wow congrats! We've traced some of our family back to Scotland and others back to England, and we know a lot of other lines go back to parts of the UK, but tracking them down has been difficult. It all gets muddy in Colonial America and the backwoods of Georgia.

[James Hood]

Wow, good on you, making the discovery of lineage. Tip a glass to celebrate!

[Mickey]

Very cool! Still hoping for my own breakthrough someday, though it will most likely not happen. Cheers to you!

[EagleJCS]

Congrats! That's how it was for me. Barely had any info on my ggf and none on HIS parents, then hit Rootsweb and BAM! 8 generations. We still haven't crossed 'the pond' on my paternal line (and may never due to loss of records, etc.), but I'm hoping. I'm also going through the process of verifying the data, since no sources were listed.

[ForresterModern]

Reverify everything, especially dates and full names and locations of relevant events (births, burials, marriages, offspring, etc...). In researching my own I discovered multiple errors in all the major geneological reference sites with relation to a William Foster in Northumberland County, VA, who unfortunately is frequently either united with or confused for another comtemporary William Foster in adjacent county, whose wives have similar names, all of whom have similar birthdates, but who can be told apart only by the number and names of their offspring, and where they were born. I have even seen it listed as the same William Foster who had one brood of children with one wife, and another brood of children with the second similarly named wife, even though the births of those two groups of children clearly overlapped one another in birth years. Had to get a hold of a photocopy of an old family bible page to finally straighten things out. Unfortunately so many records of Virginia were lost during the burnings of the Civil War you are lucky if you can piece your famiy together if they came though that area at all. It is even more confusing when each is labelled as "William Foster, The Elder" in subsequent publications of the history of their respective offspring (" The Seedlings of William Foster, the Elder" for example.

Check, double check, triple check. IF you have a family clan society see if they have any records of immigrants with the last name or its variants as listed on the multitude of ships' manifests, or tax rolls, as being brought over, as there was pre-revolutionary very good record keeping of this as bounties were paid for bringing settlers to the "new World", land granted, and records kept of all of it. That is how I found copies online of the original land grants for our family forebearer Wiliam Fo(r)ster in pre-revolutionary Virginia in the early 1700s.

A couple suggestions for those who want to use the internett to search out your relatives. First don't hesitate to make use of the specific search function by putting combined terms in quotation marks in your search Instead of listing simply William Foster in the search line list "William Foster" or "Northumberland County" along with Virginia, possibly even other specifically named offspring or predecessors in quotations. I hit a bonanza when I discovered an unusually named predecessor (Bedford Addison Foster) who elicited a huge amount of hits when I put his name in quotations along with a variety of other search items. Turns out there were three of them in the same family (BAF I, the father, BAF II his son, and BAF III nephew to BAF I) which led to some confusion but eventually brought an immense amount of leads and data.

Also try several different search engines with the same groupings of search terms--Google, Bing, Norton, Yahoo and any others you happen to have access to as you will find some that will be better than others, and occasionally find a reference that the others missed.

But beware the human element, as all these entries are by humans prone to error or taking the simplest and easiest and not always documentable route to their percieved endpoint. Good luck and happy hunting. And patience, be prepared to rrun into wsome walls, take a little time off and come back to it. OR drink Scotch whisky, like I do, and don't sweat it, as it will come together if it was meant to.

j

[Lyle1]

But beware the human element, as all these entries are by humans prone to error or taking the simplest and easiest and not always documentable route to their percieved endpoint. Good luck and happy hunting. And patience, be prepared to rrun into wsome walls, take a little time off and come back to it. OR drink Scotch whisky, like I do, and don't sweat it, as it will come together if it was meant to.

j

Good advice. Earlier this week, I was looking at Ancestry.com hints for a Scottish king, a (supposed) ancestor, who died in the early 800's. A number of trees were citing the U.S. census records from 1840 to 1900 to document events in his life!