Crossing Paths 2

As you are researching your ancestors do you ever find a family living in the same county as ancestors or cousins from a totally different branch of your tree? That’s been my experience recently.

Yesterday, while following up on a comment on a blog post about a reader’s potential connection to my Garrard County, Kentucky research, I stumbled upon such a situation. I discovered a reference to Osbourn Bland as one of the survivors taken prisoner at Blue Licks in the Winter 2006 issue of Kentucky ancestors.

This would place an Osburn Bland in Madison County, Kentucky a little before my Crawford line. Now this may not be my Osburn Bland, but it might be. I have tax lists showing an Osborne Bland living in Nelson county prior to 1800. Much more research will need to be done to figure out if this is the same person – or NOT.

Again, my Bland line is on my dad’s mother’s side of the tree while my Garrard/Madison County, Kentucky research is on my dad’s dad’s side of the tree, my Crawford line.

Because of this instance where one branch of my tree seems to cross paths with another branch, I decided to investigate the ‘Who Was There’ report in my genealogy software. I’ve used this report to identify people in Kansas in 1950. However, I’ve never run the report for a specific county or for a range of time or both. Thus, I decided to try this report for Kentucky prior to 1800.

Because I have a relatively large database with lots of facts, this report takes a long time to create. To help speed up the process, I created a marked group using the option to ‘select people by data fields’

Then I configured the ‘Search for Information’ to find ‘Any Fact’ with the ‘place’ containing ‘Kentucky’.

After saving the group, I can now go back to the ‘Who Was There List’ Report and use that marked group instead of ‘Everyone’ for the people to include.

The report still takes a bit of time to generate results, but it produced a 24 page report of the individuals with a fact placing them in Kentucky between 1750-1799. To narrow that down to the area of Garrard, Madison and Lincoln Counties, I created a new marked group. (Note: This uses OR between each of the statements.)

Using this new ‘AnyFact Garrard Madison Lincoln’ group, I re-created the ‘Who Was There’ Report.

This produced an 8 page report.

I thought I was finished. That was until I scanned this report and discovered it didn’t pick up Osborn Bland. After much hair pulling, consultation with others and more hair pulling, I discovered that Osborn Bland wasn’t included on the ‘Who Was There’ report because I didn’t have a birth fact and a death fact for Osborn Bland.

This discovery led me to the ‘Missing Information List’ report. To start with I selected the ‘death’ fact and set the criteria to either be missing or with a blank date. I then changed the people to include to my marked group for Garrard, Madison and Lincoln counties.

I discovered three pages of people in the marked group for Garrard, Madison and Lincoln counties that don’t have a death fact. Thus none of these people will show up on a ‘Who Was There Report’ for Garrard, Madison and Lincoln Counties.

_, Hannah-10231 Abrams, Elizabeth-10219 Adams, Jane Jean-13252 Adams, Reuben-13286 Anderson, Anne-10225 Anderson, Betsey-10224 Anderson, Isaac-10227 Anderson, James-10226 Anderson, Mary-10223 Anderson, Samuel-10228 Banta, Hendrick-16927 Brown, Aristippus-13500 Brown, Margaret-10210 Campbell, Susannah-10212 Clark, William-10383 Crawford, Anne-1447 Crawford, Archibald-10209 Crawford, Elizabeth-10380 Crawford, Elizabeth-13499 Crawford, Isaac-1454 Crawford, James-8577 Crawford, Jenny-10217 Crawford, John-1412 Crawford, John-8574 Crawford, John-10062 Crawford, John-10071 Crawford, Joseph-10211 Crawford, Milton-10218 Crawford, Molly-8579 Crawford, Oliver-10220 Crawford, Rebecca-8578 Crawford, Sarah-6761 Crawford, Sarah-10384 Crawford, William-10385 Croucher, Edward-14946 Crutcher, Absolem-14949 Crutcher, David-14951 Crutcher, Elizabeth-14948 Crutcher, Lucinda-14950 Crutcher, William-14945 Davis, Betsy-10386 Davis, Elizabeth-9980 Dooley, Henry-13306 Elder, William-5260 Ellis, Sally-10382 Estes, Delina-10221 Garrett, Ignatius-10379 Gass, John-10232 Harris, David-16730 Harris, Leah-16734 Kennedy, Elizabeth-14971 Maxwell, Bazeleel-10229 McAlester, Sarah-6762 McClary, Samuel-172 Miller, Elizabeth-13541 Miller, Jacob-13498 Montgomery, Benjamin-10206 Moore, Alexander-11622 Morrison, William M.-10478 Reed, Joseph-14024 Rolston, Andrew-10216 Seever, Annie-16797 Sellers, John Finley-5252 Sellers, Nathan-5257 Sellers, Samuel-10381 Shuck, Sally-16928 Smith, Polly-10207 Yewell, Mary-5258

Thus, I have work to do if I want this report to include everyone in the region. I will probably use FamilySearch to figure out approximate birth and death dates.