So here goes - A Note About My Sources:
My first source is the family history compiled by Ruth
Goldie Cheatham, from family stories, her own memory, records from an old
family Bible, and genealogical research. (Many of you probably have your own copy. For those of you who don't, I am hoping to get the entire thing scanned and put up on this site for download at some point.) It is pretty comprehensive, told in a narrative format with genealogy data
sheets in the back. I am calling this Our Family, because that is the title at
the top of the introductory page. This
was my first introduction to our ancestors, and thus my first source of
reference. Two things to keep in mind: the research portion was conducted prior to
the advent of the internet, so limited sources were available. Also, as I am coming to discover, sometimes a
person’s memories aren’t entirely reliable, so family stories and
recollections, although fascinating and enlightening, are not always 100
percent accurate.
That being said, I have tried to verify as much of the
information in the family history as possible using primary source
material. I began my research using
Ancestry.com and the Family Search website.
When I had exhausted what they had to offer (or was just not using the
correct search terms to get what I needed), I turned to the internet in
general. This led me to a variety of
websites with new documents and information, as well as back to Ancestry.com to
collections that for some reason never came up in my general searches. As I mentioned previously, I like to get and
keep my facts straight, but I am finding that even primary source documents
contain errors and contradictions.
For example, census records love to misspell names, use nicknames, get ages and/or birth years slightly wrong, and misreport where people were born. I don’t know how much of this is the census-taker’s fault, faulty memory on the part of older people, or someone guessing when they give the census taker the information. (I’ll bet a lot of fathers out there don’t really know exactly how old their children are!) I’ve found the same kinds of mistakes on birth and death certificates. So, sometimes a determination has to be made for the sake of putting it down on paper. I have tried to use as many sources as possible to nail down the truth of things, and when there was no clear cut answer, I put my thinking cap on and tried to come up with the most reasonable version of the information. (If any of you find something that I’ve gotten incorrect, I’d love to see the evidence so I can fix it!)
Of course, all of this takes a whole lot of time, so you are going to get the stuff I've already done pretty quickly, but after that you might have to wait a bit before I'm able to add more. (Because, you know, I won't be having time to go searching for new sources of information if I'm busy posting stuff up on this site!)
For example, census records love to misspell names, use nicknames, get ages and/or birth years slightly wrong, and misreport where people were born. I don’t know how much of this is the census-taker’s fault, faulty memory on the part of older people, or someone guessing when they give the census taker the information. (I’ll bet a lot of fathers out there don’t really know exactly how old their children are!) I’ve found the same kinds of mistakes on birth and death certificates. So, sometimes a determination has to be made for the sake of putting it down on paper. I have tried to use as many sources as possible to nail down the truth of things, and when there was no clear cut answer, I put my thinking cap on and tried to come up with the most reasonable version of the information. (If any of you find something that I’ve gotten incorrect, I’d love to see the evidence so I can fix it!)
Of course, all of this takes a whole lot of time, so you are going to get the stuff I've already done pretty quickly, but after that you might have to wait a bit before I'm able to add more. (Because, you know, I won't be having time to go searching for new sources of information if I'm busy posting stuff up on this site!)
I’ll be adding our ancestors to this website one generation
at a time, beginning with the Cheathams and tracing it back through the
fathers. I do realize that brothers and
sisters and uncles and cousins and in-laws were a part of our ancestors lives
and so including them sheds a certain light on their stories, but this is such
an overwhelming task that I have to start somewhere and I chose what seemed
both the most logical and easy to organize. I’ll add in the other branches at some point as I go along, probably starting with one wife of one ancestor and tracing that back before moving on to another one. Maybe. That's the plan right now, but in the six days since I decided to take on this project, I have already changed my mind about how to do things several times. So we'll see.
Thanks for bearing with me through this boring disclaimer type stuff. I know you are all just wiggling in your seats with eager anticipation right now. Well, it turns out that you're in luck, because I decided to put up two posts at once. Which means you can finally see what I've got for you. Hooray!
- Therese
Thanks for bearing with me through this boring disclaimer type stuff. I know you are all just wiggling in your seats with eager anticipation right now. Well, it turns out that you're in luck, because I decided to put up two posts at once. Which means you can finally see what I've got for you. Hooray!
- Therese
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