Carver kindred... Finally

I go through cycles of digging on one line of my family and then another. The past couple of weeks I've been gathering census data, marriage records, and death records for Carver's in South-East Missouri. My particular line is through Malissa Carver who married Ezekiel George Jasper Sullivan. She is my ggg-grandmother.

Through my gathering I found many Carver's who seemed to be related - they used similar names, etc. but I was really struggling as to how they were all related. They would be in one county in 1850, skip 1860, a neighboring county in 1870, the original county in 1880, and so on. They were not particular about calling their children by one name. For instance, Joseph Richard Carver might be Joseph in one census living with his parents, Richard living on his own, the marriage record might call him Joseph Richard Carver while his death certificate called him Joseph Richard Carver. Craziness!

I was fortunate to find a Family Resource File on familysearch.org that had many of my Carver's and had their connections. My only gripe is that it did not have sources documented, so I have to take someone's word for their searching. Much of it matched what I had gleaned from source records, so I feel grateful for the man/men who uploaded their family information to familysearch. Now I can keep looking for descendants.

But genealogy is the ultimate puzzle. It never really ends -- there are always more generations being born and there always comes a point where I've reached the "brick wall" where the records do not exist (or I just have no idea where else to look).

I also did a little familysearch indexing this week. I wanted to work on genealogy and I just couldn't focus on any area for my own, so I thought I'd give half an hour or so on helping others find THEIR genealogy. Random acts of genealogical kindness, right? :)

Now, I'll dig for a few more minutes then go on to bed. I would welcome a dream about my ancestors, especially if James Willis Kerley could show up and tell me where to find his father, mother, etc. Yes, I would really welcome that. OR if Richard Carver b. abt 1796 would show up and point me towards HIS parents/brothers/sisters, etc. That would ROCK! LOL

Good luck to all of your family history endeavors.
Love, Dece