Its Complicated

Tracing the family tree can get complicated. often this is caused by the lack of consistency in names. In my case an example is my mother's Bowen family. In the early 1800s they were apparently often recorded as Boren. Hard to say which name is the REAL family name. maybe one day I will know. I have for sometime been trying to find some information to confirm my belief that my gggrandfather Daniel Boren/Bowen was married to a Clementine Bradley. Tonight I found that Clementine Bradley had a brother named Moses who had children by a first wife Jenny Bowen, but when she died, he apparently sent them to live with the widow of his sister Clementine's father in law! But having the kids recorded being with her on the 1850 census, seems to close the loop for me and confirms the connections I had made. So, after several hours work tonight, I feel something was gained.

Ancestry DNA

I submitted a saliva sample to Ancestry DNA. The results were posted to my Ancestry account. So far all I have is an ethnicity estimate, no potential ancestors. The ethnicity estimate held no surprises.

Father's home town family

Tonight I made a new contact with a relative near Bodo,  Norway.  Her grandmother was a sister of my grandfather.  This will  help me fill in some gaps on the family tree.

Fruit for the Tree

Unexpected, but so full of surprises, come the emails and messages with gems of information on our ancestors. Today I received a message via ancestroy.com from a decendent of an Israel family that is part of my wife's ancestry. This person was able to provide compelling confirmation of several people in this branch and we now have that Israel family documented to the mid 1600s in Middlesex, England.

New hints on Hensley family

Getting a lot of new, good hints from Ancestry.com. Just linked my maternal grandmother's Hensley family from Tennessee, back through North Carolina, Virginia, and England. Interesting to see how some ancestors lived not far from where I am now, but the family moved on, and eventually returned, sometimes two or three generations later.

Family Royalty

Occasionally in doing family ancestry work, an interesting line appears. One such is my wife's Miller line. I now have her Miller's connected back to this interesting gentleman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Tudor

Sifting through lives

This weekend my two brothers and I, and our three wives spent three days at my mother's house, clearing it out so it can be sold. It turns out my mother seems to have kept a great deal of the things that came into her life. I now have at my home many boxes of family photos, recipes, newspaper clippings, letters, cards, funeral documents and so forth. A brief look through some of this indicates much of it is things I have never before seen.

So, over the next weeks and months, I will be spending time examining, scanning, and filing away these small scraps of a long life.