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Sorting out Problem Families in Colonial Virginia Records: A Set of Tools and a Case Study
Sorting out Problem Families in Colonial Virginia Records: A Set of Tools and a Case Study
Presented by Dr. Bill Lindsey
The goal of this presentation is to offer researchers a problem-solving approach when they trace a family back to Virginia in the 1700s and discover that the ancestor they’re tracing is one of several people (usually men) found in the records of a colonial Virginia family at the same time. How do you sort those men with the same name out and identify the one who is, documents tell you, your ancestor?
Why Virginia?
• Unlike some other colonial states (especially in New England), its records are very spotty,
• And those that do exist have often suffered tremendous damage in the two wars fought on Virginia soil.
• So special techniques have to be developed to piece together Virginia families prior to 1790, especially in counties with partial or absent records.
The presentation focuses on a case study of a Thomas Thomson living in Louisa County, Virginia, in the middle of the 18th century at a point when there are multiple men named Thomas Thom(p)son living in Louisa County — men that have gotten confused with each other in published accounts.
William D. (Bill) Lindsey is a Little Rock native who holds a B.A. in English from Loyola University, an M.A. in English from Tulane University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in theology from the University of St. Michael’s College of the Toronto School of Theology. Among other published works, he’s the author of Fiat Flux: The Writings of Wilson R. Bachelor, Nineteenth-Century Country Doctor and Philosopher, which won the Booker-Worthen prize in 2014; and (with William L. Russell and Mary Ryan) A Family Practice: The Russell Doctors and the Evolving Business of Medicine, 1799-1989.
Bill maintains a genealogical blog in which his goal is to place online his research of nearly fifty years. The blog is called Begats and Bequeathals: A Southern U.S. Family Documented and is found here: https://
Zoom meeting video:
0:01:50 Meeting
0:04:00 Presentation
1:07:49 Questions and Answers
1:23:52 End