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A Hutchinson DNA Experiment: Using the Scientific Method in Genealogy

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Do you remember learning about the scientific method in high school—or perhaps even earlier? Have you ever considered how closely the process of genealogy research can resemble the scientific method? Most genealogy researchers will tell you to begin with a question. From there, genealogists may use different terminology, but I often find myself mentally following the familiar steps of the scientific method: Question Hypothesis — a proposed answer to the question Test the hypothesis Collect data Evaluate the data Draw a conclusion Translated into genealogy, those steps might look something like this: Question: Who are the parents of _____? Hypothesis: Preliminary research suggests that X may be the son or daughter of Y. Research/Test: Locate records for Y, X, and their relatives while documenting the research. Collect Data: Gather census records, land records, probate records, DNA matches, family trees, and other evidence. Evaluate: Does the accumulated evidence support or contrad...
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New Netherland Settlers

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Do you have ancestral lines going back to the settlement of New Netherland ? I knew that my husband's SEBRING line could be traced back to New Netherland. However, it wasn't until recently, when I connected my third great-grandmother, Rachel Harris Currey, to her parents, that I uncovered several Dutch lines in my own tree. Suddenly, New Netherland research became much more relevant to my genealogy. Thus, when I recently saw a Facebook post from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) about its New Netherland Settlers project, I immediately clicked to learn more. The project has an ambitious goal: to develop detailed, peer-reviewed biographical sketches of the people who resided in New Netherland prior to 1664. The first completed sketches were released online in July 2025, and additional sketches are being added as research is completed. What makes these sketches especially valuable to genealogists is their scope. Depending on the records available for...
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Unlinking Albert Hutchinson

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Have you ever unlinked a child from parents in your family tree? If so, did you stop to consider all the different places where that relationship—and your reason for changing it—might need to be updated? Recently, I made the difficult decision to unlink my second great-grandfather, Albert Hutchinson , from the parents I had long assigned to him: Aaron Hutchinson and Sarah Merry . Why I Questioned the Relationship My recent research into the descendants of Aaron and Hannah Hutchinson , combined with a closer look at my autosomal DNA matches, has caused me to question whether Albert was actually their grandson. The problem is fairly simple: I have not found evidence directly connecting my Albert Hutchinson of Iowa to the Hutchinson family of Livingston County, New York. I do have records stating that Albert was born in Fulton County, New York . That location does not prove he wasn't related to the Livingston County family, but it adds to my concerns about a relationship that was alre...
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Monday Diggings

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Charles Mentzer and Nettie Wells Marry in 1893 Have you ever looked at a marriage record and realized how much more it tells you than simply the date of the wedding? As I continue digging through the records in my genealogy files, I came across the marriage record for my maternal great-grandparents, Charles O. Mentzer and Nettie A. Wells . They were married in Woodson County, Kansas, in October 1893. While I already had their marriage date in my family tree, the actual record adds several details about the beginning of their married life. The Marriage License The license was issued by the Woodson County Probate Court on 14 October 1893 . At the time, both Charles and Nettie were residents of Yates Center, Kansas . Charles was listed as 24 years old, while Nettie was 20. The couple did not marry on the day the license was issued. Instead, the certificate on the lower portion of the record documents their marriage four days later, on 18 October 1893 . The completed license was then retur...
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Turning Point in My LIfe

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  Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again — time for some more Genealogy Fun!! This week's challenge asks us to identify an event, milestone or turning point in our own life—or that of an ancestor—and consider how that event could become the basis for a family story. When I started thinking about the milestones in my own life, one year quickly rose to the top: 1974 . In May 1974, I was finishing college at Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia. On May 17, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree with a major in physical science education. The very next day, May 18, I married Michael Dean Philbrick at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Emporia. Thus, in the space of about 24 hours, I went from being Marcia Crawford, college student, to Marcia Philbrick, college graduate and married woman. But the changes didn't stop there. That August, Michael and I moved to Seneca, Kansas, where we rented the upper floor of Chet and Madge Milne's h...
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Problem Solving with AI

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 When I decided to move Heartland Genealogy from WordPress to Blogger, I thought the biggest challenge would be moving the content. Instead, I've received an unexpected education in DNS records, custom domains, HTTPS certificates, RSS feeds, featured images, redirects, and social media previews . And, as has happened several times during this move, ChatGPT has served as my troubleshooting partner. The Custom Domain Adventure One of my goals was to use my Heartland Genealogy domain with Blogger. I already owned heartlandgenealogy.org , and I wanted readers to reach the Blogger site through www.heartlandgenealogy.org rather than a Blogspot address. That sounded simple. It wasn't. Blogger provided the CNAME records that needed to be added to my DNS settings. After making those changes, there was the inevitable waiting period while the new DNS information propagated. Then came the questions. Was the CNAME correct? Did I need to turn on Redirect domain in Blogger? Why did Blogger ...
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Following the Land

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A Timeline of Richard Foster’s Warren County Property Have you ever looked at an abstract of title and wondered how you were ever going to make sense of it? The abstract I've been working with traces land in Warren County, Indiana, back to my ancestor Richard Foster , who purchased it from the federal government in 1828. But the abstract is much more than a record of that original purchase. It follows the property through more than a century of wills, heirs, deeds, mortgages, court proceedings, and other transactions. And I probably wouldn't have this record at all if someone hadn't found me through my online genealogy research. A Genealogy Gift from a Stranger Some time ago, I was contacted by a woman who had discovered either my online family tree or my Heartland Genealogy blog and recognized my connection to the Foster family. She had an abstract of title for land that had once belonged to Richard Foster . As I recall, she wasn't researching the Foster family as her ...
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When Neighbors Have a Familiar Name

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Have you ever read another genealogist's blog and wondered whether your families might somehow be connected? I've followed fellow geneablogger Linda Stufflebeam  and her blog, Empty Branches on the Family Tre e, for quite some time. Since several of Linda's posts about her Stufflebeam research have mentioned Warren County, Indiana , I've occasionally wondered whether our families might cross paths somewhere in that county. It wasn't until I received an abstract of title for land originally purchased by my ancestor Richard Foster that I had a reason to look more closely. A Familiar Name on the Map Richard Foster purchased land in Section 10, Township 21 North, Range 9 West in Warren County, Indiana, in 1828. While looking at a map of the first landowners in the area, I noticed something interesting. John E. Stufflebeam owned land nearby. Stufflebeam! Since I recognized the surname from Linda's blog, that immediately caught my attention. Then I checked ...
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When AI Connected a Dower Record to a PIece of Medical History

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  When AI Connected a Dower Record to a Piece of Medical History Have you ever been working with a record for one reason only to discover that one of the people named in it had a much bigger story? That's what happened while I was working on a recent Friday Find involving Thomas D. Crawford and his widow, Jane. I started with a record, not with a famous person. The Original Record I have had a photocopy of a Jefferson County, Indiana, probate record in my files for years. I probably obtained the copy during a research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. More recently, I found the record again in the digitized images on FamilySearch and obtained a much better copy. The record comes from the February 1836 term of the Jefferson County Probate Court and is headed: Jane Crawford vs. The Heirs of Thomas D. Crawford Decd — On Petition for Dower The proceeding involved the partition of land belonging to Thomas D. Crawford. His property was described as the Southwest Quart...
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Following the Trail to the Congressional Record

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Have you ever found a genealogy source that pointed you toward another source—and discovered that the second source told you much more of the story? In my previous post, When an AI Search Leads to a New Genealogy Source , I discussed how a Google Gemini search led me to references to my great-great-grandmother, Sarah J. Briles , in congressional records. The link I initially found, however, led to a transcription and image on Wikisource rather than to the original government publications. That made me wonder: Could I find the original records? The answer was yes. I turned to GovInfo , the U.S. Government Publishing Office's site for official publications. Not only does the site contain digitized copies of the Congressional Record and other government documents, but those collections are searchable. A search for "Sarah Briles" helped me piece together a much more complete timeline of Sarah's efforts to have her Civil War widow's pension restored. The Appea...
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Monday's Diggings

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  The Mentzer Family Bible Do you have family Bibles tucked away among your family treasures? If so, have you taken the time to photograph or scan the family register pages? I'm fortunate to have several family Bibles that were part of my grandmother's collection. One of those Bibles belonged to the family of my grandmother, Pauline Edith Mentzer Briles . Like many family Bibles, its handwritten pages preserve information about births and a marriage that might otherwise have been lost. For this week's Monday's Diggings , I'm sharing two pages from that Bible. Parents' Names The first page identifies Pauline's parents and records their birth dates and marriage date. Transcription Family Register — Parents' Names Husband: Charles E. Mentzer Born: 1869, July 1 Wife: Nettie F. Wells Born: 1873, Feb. 5 Married: 1893, Oct. 3 This page is particularly valuable because it connects the children recorded elsewhere in the Bible directly to Charles E. Mentzer a...
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

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Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It’s Saturday Night again — time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1) Do you have any records of your ancestors' schooling, such as report cards, yearbooks, or photos? Both of my grandmothers were "keepers." They saved a wonderful variety of family items, including photographs, military papers, letters and, yes, even school records. Among those treasured items are two school souvenirs that document the childhood of my grandfather, Edward Osmond Briles , and his siblings. The first is a 1906 school souvenir from Rock Creek School, District No. 69 , which lists four Briles children: Ethel, Osmond, Lulu and Glen . Rock Creek School was located in Pleasant Township, Coffey County, Kansas. Although the school had a Burlington, Kansas, mailing address, it was not actually located in the city of Burlington. This little souvenir does more than tell me where...
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From Land Records to Video

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  Following Richard Foster’s Property Through an Abstract of Title Sometimes a genealogy record contains far more of a story than can be absorbed in a single reading. That was certainly the case with an abstract of title for land originally purchased by Richard Foster in Warren County, Indiana . After transcribing the abstract, I decided to experiment with another way of exploring—and sharing—the information it contained. I uploaded the transcription to Google NotebookLM , where I created both an infographic and an audio overview . I then combined those two pieces in Canva to create a video, which I uploaded to YouTube. The finished video provides a different way to follow more than a century of history associated with one piece of land. It Started with Richard Foster The abstract begins on July 12, 1828 , when Richard Foster entered 240 acres from the United States. The property consisted of the northeast quarter and the west half of the southeast quarter of Section 10, Township ...
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