Doing genealogy 'backwards'

[lupaglupa]

You don't have to look far in genealogy to see that the first recommendation is to start in the modern day, usually with yourself, and work UP your family tree. This is by far the better way to discover your ancestry.

Well..... I just started volunteering for a group that want to figure out how to do it, to my mind, backwards. They want me (and others) to start with someone in the past and come into the present. I have personally tried this once or twice and found it very difficult. Frustratingly difficult. As part of the project I'm working on, the organization holes to develop a methodology for doing genealogy in this way.

And so, I am reaching out to all of you. What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

 

[JOHN42768]

Why would anybody select an unrelated person and try to find their descendants? Makes no sense to me, if any success what would it possibly gain as not going to be related.
Doing a up tree search is painful enough

 

[OldSarge79]

I did that about four years ago, and it wasn't easy.
I inherited a large stack of letters from an old friend at church. They were from another family who crossed the plains and settled in Oregon, the letters being from the 1830's to the 1860's.
Being of no particular value to me, I decided to give them to any living descendants I could find. It took about a month but I finally found someone in Kansas, if I remember correctly, who was a descendant.
After finding a phone number, I called and got the woman on the line. When I explained the purpose of my call, she was rather leery of me, probably thinking I was trying to scam her. Then she asked, "What do you want for them?" It took a couple of minutes to convince her that I only wanted to give them to her......for free and I would pay the shipping. I just wanted her to have them.
She finally agreed to accept them after talking to her sister first. I shipped them the next day and never even got a thank-you. Still, I'm glad I did it. Hopefully someone in that family will appreciate the letters, if not now, then maybe later generations.

 

[Story]

And so, I am reaching out to all of you. What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

The problem is that folks have preconceived notions of how the branches should fit and will pound them to match those notions, instead of just following the facts.

 

[OldSarge79]

What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

Actually, I've tried it several times with Civil War items, and once with a Model 1795 musket I have, sometimes with success. I'm addicted to tracking down descendants of identified items in my possession.

My best STARTING places to find the next generation will come as no surprise:
Census reports
Findagrave.com
Obituaries
Family trees on Ancestry and Familysearch.
Google

For me, it hasn't been much different than working in the other direction. It sometimes takes longer and, as always, one may have to use one's imagination as to where to look, but that kind of thing can be very rewarding.

 

[Fairfield]

Why would anybody select an unrelated person and try to find their descendants? Makes no sense to me, if any success what would it possibly gain as not going to be related.
Doing a up tree search is painful enough

Yes, I've encountered it--almost always when a person wishes to prove his/her descent from someone famous. How you proceed probably is a function of how long ago the "target" lived. If possible, you could use census records as well as obituaries (although these records were not all always all-inclusive).

You might look into some of the older, printed genealogies. Although they were constructed in the traditional way, they tended to include all descendants. An example of this is The Emery Book (properly titled something like The Descendants of Anthony Emery of Newburyport, Massachusetts); it was first compiled in the late 1800's by Rev. Rufus Emery but has been updated by later members of the family and by the Emery Family Association. You might check to see if there is a family association because they keep very extensive records of inter-connections. The Nyes are probably the best known but I think that one of the most reliable is the Wing Family (the bulk of its very extensive genealogy was done by Raymond Wing--who was never wrong!).

I'd take the surname under study and enter it with the word "genealogy" into Google; then go over to "More" (drop down menu: choose "Books"). You can also fool around with the Card Catalog of Ancestry because many people who put up Trees rely heavily on printed genealogies).

Personally, if I were you, I'd simply refuse!

 

[LCYingling3rd]

You don't have to look far in genealogy to see that the first recommendation is to start in the modern day, usually with yourself, and work UP your family tree. This is by far the better way to discover your ancestry.

Well..... I just started volunteering for a group that want to figure out how to do it, to my mind, backwards. They want me (and others) to start with someone in the past and come into the present. I have personally tried this once or twice and found it very difficult. Frustratingly difficult. As part of the project I'm working on, the organization holes to develop a methodology for doing genealogy in this way.

And so, I am reaching out to all of you. What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

I don't know. It makes very little sense to me.

Take my maternal 4th great grandfather, Jacob Stuckey. Born 1761 and died 1844. He married Margaret Cline and they had eight children. His son John Stuckey's son was Michael, whose son was Newton, whose son was my mother's father Carlton Stuckey. Now back to Jacob and Margaret who also had a daughter Margaret Stuckey that married Josephus Bishop, and they had T. J. Bishop, who had Daisy Bishop Dehaven whose daughter was my mother's mother, Virginia Dehaven Stuckey.

Having these two cousin grandparents is not too extremely difficult to determine when working from me through my mother back into history. Coming from Jacob and Margaret forward though, would be extremely difficult. One would have had to search out his marriage and then follow each of the eight children's lines to the present to find out. It just seems to be picking the most difficult path. I don't know if I would like to do it.

The only reason I can see to do it would be to determine the lineage of some famous person or something. Say one was interested in finding one of Babe Ruth's decedents; or some other historical figure. Of course, the farther back you go the worse it gets because there will ultimately be hundreds of decedents from dozens of family lines? My 2nd great grandfather, Michael Stuckey, married a Rebecca Hite, which makes me one of many, many distant decedents of a Hans Jost Hite (1685 to 1761), the first settler of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I would not want to consider starting with him and working forward. He had a whole slew of children to at least two wives and a very complicated genealogical record.

It just seems strange to me. You would start with someone, look for marriage records, then birth records and try to move on from there.

 

[LCYingling3rd]

The two examples of tracing letters or artifacts are certainly good examples of doing it. Like I said, though, the farther back, the more lines you will run into. But I have some identified items, and it would be interesting to do.

 

[Grayman]

I have done some of this when trying to link a person with the same last name as an ancestor and who is on the company or regimental roster with that ancestor. If I can't find their parents I'll go back to the initial immigrant on my tree with that family name and search forward along each branch looking for clues that might link to the mystery roster entry.

If the starting point is from 1850 or later it gets easier, assuming USA origin. From 1850 on the census included names and ages of everyone in the household instead of just counts of males and females in certain age ranges. If you sign up for Ancestry you can usually find some records for a person given a name and approximate birth or death date. A state or county where they lived helps.

Prior to 1850 it can be very difficult, especially if your initial person is female. If she was widowed and head of household in a census year prior to 1850 you might find her. Sometimes you'll find marriage records or probate/will records that help.

Outside of Ancestry, FindAGrave.com is a great resource for cemetery and graveyard info. Often there will be attached family links (spouse, children, siblings, parents), though they may be incomplete. Before I signed up for Ancestry I used FindAGrave for probably 75% of my genealogical research.

Beyond that you're into the deeper stuff with land records, immigration info, military service, and other sources that may have some free online resources, but might require a call or visit to state or county archives to access. There are many older books with region-specific history or family name history/genealogy, but they can be hard to discover, much less acquire.

 

[Grayman]

I don't know. It makes very little sense to me.

It just seems strange to me. You would start with someone, look for marriage records, then birth records and try to move on from there.

Another case where I've used this strategy is where I hit a genealogical brick wall with an ancestor born about 1775. I have good marriage info and offspring from probate records. But I cannot find the man's parents. Oral family history is that the original immigrant came from Ireland and settled in Virginia in the early colonial era. Later some descendants migrated south, possibly with land grants for service in the Revolution.

So I've been searching for people with that particular last name who came to Virginia or possibly Philadelphia, trying to find a link going forward. There is likely more than one line even though our name is not very common. It gets tough to track people with sparse records and migration through thinly populated regions over several generations. Also common in these areas are family cemeteries on homesteads, many lost to time.

 

[lelliott19]

And so, I am reaching out to all of you. What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

I've done this lots of times. When trying to track down descendants of specific soldiers to ask if they have diaries, letters, memoirs, etc. I did it just the other day in the thread about the "ghost story." @stu613 said he might visit the Mexia City Cemetery where the informant is buried. I looked on his tree and saw that one of his children stayed in Mexia, TX then I looked at the census to find names of those children -- the subject's grandchildren. Then I looked for them in the US Census for the year range and discovered that one was a WWII officer (can't recall the rank). But that WWII vet was buried in the same Mexia, TX cemetery. That hints that there may still be descendants living in Mexia.

In that case, I didn't go any further to identify and contact them. But I have done that before when researching specific soldiers. In two cases, those contacts yielded photos and permissions to use them in my Gettysburg Magazine article. Two of the victims of the most destructive artillery impact documented at the Battle of Gettysburg. I've also turned up descendants who had nothing. One guy was a "blank" on the family tree. The family never knew what happened to him. They were stunned to learn that he was mortally wounded at Gettysburg and died July 5, 1863. That was in March 2023 --- so nearly 160 years after the fact.

 

[DixieRifles]

Why would anybody select an unrelated person and try to find their descendants? Makes no sense to me, if any success what would it possibly gain as not going to be related.
Doing a up tree search is painful enough

Well, I'm good at doing things wrong. I build at tree up ( or Back in time in my brain) while focusing on my direct ancestors. I may jot down names of children.
I can see how people like me would get Up the tree 4 or 5 generations to an important ancestor who may have his tree well documented. After expanding that ancestor's family, he could come back Down.

 

[firstflabn]

The assbackwards method could work well if there are enough siblings marrying . Ask your students to explain the meaning of the term 'permutations.' Present them with the (not so) hypothetical of the effect of extended families living in close proximity, recycling given names far enough in the past where written records become scarce. Good luck figgering out which is Uncle Fred and which is Nephew Fred.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

I did my genealogy the normal way, but since then most of the genealogy I've done is "backwards."

I maintain several local genealogy databases on Ancestry.com for the local historical society, some of them started by my predecessor. Everyone who appears on a census is in there along with everyone buried in the local cemeteries - or at least that's the goal. Along with random obituaries and other people connected with the local area.

I've tracked down living veterans and families of deceased veterans and lighthouse keepers from my lighthouse and local military stations.

I started building an Excel database of everyone known to have served at my local WW2 station. I've got a couple thousand people in there so far, out of an estimated 20,000 total. I've only added a few hundred of them into an Ancestry.com tree - mostly officers or people for whom I have extra details (letters, photos, newspaper stories). Some I can't find, but WW2 draft cards and enlistment records help this a lot.

I started, and will eventually spend more time on, building a massive tree of American lighthouse keepers and their descendants.

I don't have much in the way of specific tips though - at least not anything different than normal genealogy. Some people there's just not enough information, especially more common names.

 

[R. Porter]

Why would anybody select an unrelated person and try to find their descendants? Makes no sense to me, if any success what would it possibly gain as not going to be related.
Doing a up tree search is painful enough

I bought a model 1850 foot officer's sword a few years ago. It had its former owner's first and middle initials and last name stamped on the pommel. The seller provided some documentation and mentioned the name of the descendant that he got it from. When I got the sword and documentation I noticed the records didn't match up and it appeared that the original owner mustered out as a corporal. A quick check of the 1860 census showed there were two individuals of about the same age with identical names. This was an unusual name. One of them was an officer, but was he actually the owner of the sword? Lots of things can happen and lots of things can become misunderstood in 160 years. To tackle the problem I started with the two candidates and Ancestry.Com to work out their descendants. If I could find one of them with a descendant with the name of the person who sold it to the dealer who sold it to me I could be sure who the original owner was.

Finally I found the descendant with the correct name and I identified the original owner of the sword. Then I could focus on the correct record. It was the officer who had served with the USCT.

I hope you can now answer your own questions.

 

[lelliott19]

Finally I found the descendant with the correct name and I identified the original owner of the sword.

Yours reminded me of another time I worked sort of "backwards" It was a beautiful image a tintype of a young well-dressed militiaman, listed in one of those obscure online estate sales. It was the only image in the estate sale so I opined it was not a collector and this one tintype must have been a "family" image. I knew the estate was in VA and the associated names - well at least the wife. I found the husband had been dead a decade.

The uniform was distinctive with fancy epaulettes and two letters gilded on the belt plate. He had a distinctive fancy shako on the table next to him with a sunburst or flower shaped plate with a number I couldn't really make out. At first, I thought it was New York National Guard. Off I went through the ancestors of these two people. All the way back to Civil War and pre-CW times. Both of them had ancestors of the correct age to have served, but none of them were Yankees. All the ancestors on both sides were either Virginia or North Carolina. I enlisted the help of a uniform expert who helped me nail down the pattern and date of the shako - to know when the image was taken. Then I started searching all the militia articles in the VA and NC newspapers for the name of any of their ancestors who it could have been. I got pretty "attached" to him during all this and was determined to identify him. I was relentless.

In the meantime, the auction was scheduled to end and I hadn't yet ID'd him. When it ended, the price went above what I had established as my max for an unidentified image. BUT -- my sister had gotten involved and she, I guess, was fully convinced I'd eventually be able to ID him. So when I stopped bidding, she bid one more time and won him. Sure enough, about 2 days after the auction ended, I nailed the ID. He's beautiful and the only ID'd image of that particular Virginia Militia unit known. So my sister owns the image now but I'm still pretty "attached" to him.

 

[R. Porter]

I often try to do research, backwards, forwards, or sideways, on items I find on eBay. It's half the fun of looking.

 

[lupaglupa]

Thank you all for your input! I will let you know if we start to put together a methodology that is any different than the usual looking for links and proving them - just down not up - that we normally do. I'm curious to see how this goes....

 

[ColonelBuckwalter]

You don't have to look far in genealogy to see that the first recommendation is to start in the modern day, usually with yourself, and work UP your family tree. This is by far the better way to discover your ancestry.

Well..... I just started volunteering for a group that want to figure out how to do it, to my mind, backwards. They want me (and others) to start with someone in the past and come into the present. I have personally tried this once or twice and found it very difficult. Frustratingly difficult. As part of the project I'm working on, the organization holes to develop a methodology for doing genealogy in this way.

And so, I am reaching out to all of you. What would be your hints in doing research with a past record as a starting point? What would your methodology look like?

I've always thought that would be a better way to do things. I think if I had obtained my degree in history and not changed to art, that would be how I grabbed a class at the outset.

 

[Grayman]

Don't neglect looking sideways. Sometimes when you hit a snag you can find relevant info on siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles that produces a useful breadcrumb.

Also, some census data was taken and then later alphabetized by county/district/township. This erases valuable information. The best census data is the stuff recorded and archived in it's more raw form, because the order of the entries is the order the census-taker visited the homes. Now you know the names of likely neighbors who might have linked documents as witnesses, executors, grantor/grantee, etc.

For example, I found one interesting petition by several rural farmers (including my ancestor) for the construction of a county road. The document was signed by the petitioners. Another document I found includes a linear "map" of a new road and the names of the landowners it traverses and the waterways it crosses. If you can find contemporary maps showing large landowners/plantations you might discover the area where rural ancestors lived. Robert Mills' Atlas of SC (1820) is one such resource.