Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Wild-Goose Chase

 It's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , and this week's challenge is to post about our biggest wild-ancestor (goose) chase.  Here are the instructions:

1)  All genealogists are human, and most of us have gone on wild ancestor (goose) chases in our genealogy research career.  What was one of the wild ancestor chases in your research?  Explain the situation and how you (hopefully!) solved the puzzle.

2) Tell us about your biggest genealogy wild ancestor (goose) chase in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

 

One of my dearest friends is from east Tennessee, and is a member of the First Families of Franklin (FFF) lineage society.  My mother's people are also from east Tennessee, in the same area as those of my friend, and I think it would be wonderful if I, too, can prove my lineage and join the FFF.  The society recognizes descendants of residents of the proposed State of Franklin, which did not reach Congressional approval and died on the vine.

 

So my biggest "wild-ancestor" chase right now is trying to find evidence of my ancestor Teter Nave's family presence in east Tennessee in the requisite time period.  I have been gathering land records for the area in east Tennessee's Carter County.  There are several more records I need to obtain, then I need to transcribe and study all of them to see if the information I'm looking for actually exists.

 

I've been told that DeedMapper is good software for plotting land, especially using the metes and bounds method of land survey.  That's the method that states land boundaries in terms of this rock or that post or yonder tree, none of which may have survived the three hundred years since the original survey that appears in these records.  

 

The next step, of course, would be to use this information to apply for membership in the FFF.

 

If not the grandest "wild-ancestor" chase in my family history research, this one surely is the biggest in scope.  I'm nowhere near solving this particular problem.  I'll be working on it this year, in the middle of several other projects, most of them genealogical in one way or another.

   

 

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Goals

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun asks:

1)  What are your genealogy goals for 2025?  Consider genealogy research, education, organizing, service, writing, and whatever else you care to share.

My main genealogy goal this year is to enroll in the non-credit courses in genealogy offered by Boston University.  I'd like to sharpen my skills.

Another goal is to finish my revision of Richards Packard: His Ancestors and Descendants, a family history of my direct line from my fourth great-grandfather.  I have found much more information, so a revision is needed.  I will deposit copies with the Georgeville, Quebec, Canada, Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

I need to finish investigating land ownership in East Tennessee by my mother's ancestor, Teter Nave.  I'm hoping to be able to go back far enough and, with other information, apply to the First Families of Franklin lineage society.

I'm thinking of contacting my county's board of education to see if they'd be interested in a course on genealogy in their continuing education program.

 I think that's probably enough.  These, alone, will make for a busy year.