Confusion and the Proof Standard

For years my grandmother, father, and I have had the same Riggin brick wall, which stopped at John C Riggin, my four times great grandfather. Family lore said he came to Illinois from Tennessee and that his father was a minister, who rode a circuit, preaching at several churches on rotating Sundays. What we could never figure out were the names of his parents or any siblings.

After researching John C Riggin's descendants more thoroughly, and definitively proving he settled in Madison County, soon after Illinois became a state, I purchased a used copy of the two-volume Centennial History of Madison County. I was hoping there would be profiles of prominent citizens of the county. The book did include those profiles, but my known ancestor was not among them. However, I did discover this lovely snippet in the section about Troy:

My "new" books, Centennial History of Madison County

I was still a rank amateur family historian and didn't realize the significance of finding out the names of two of his siblings. Instead, I kept banging my head against the brick wall that was John C Riggin. However, earlier this month, I started researching John's brothers -- Harry and James. I still haven't learned much about James, but Harry was a goldmine!

"Troy" from the Centennial History of Madison County

I found an article entitled Three Rs in Lincoln's Education: Rogers, Riggin, and Rankin, by James T. Hickey, which appeared on pages 195-207 in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 52, Number 1, Lincoln Sesquicentennial (Spring 1959). Hickey was one of the foremost authorities on Lincoln, especially his time in Illinois. The article had this to say about Harry and James Riggin:

"The Riggin brothers were sons of the Rev. James Riggin, a Methodist preacher of Sevierville, Tennessee. Originally Catholic, the Riggin family had renounced Catholicism when they came to America from Ireland."

An extensive history of Harry Riggin's life was also included. It seems he knew Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln was a student at New Salem, learning under Mentor Graham, and opposed Lincoln in the 1838 state legislature elections.

From Mr. Hickey's article, photograph courtesy of the
Illinois State Historical Society

With that clue I was able to trace the Riggin family, through the Reverend James Riggin, back to Somerset County, Maryland, when the first Riggin -- Teague -- arrived sometime in the 1650s as an indentured servant. A book of Somerset County wills and land records proved invaluable.

Like my Scottish Muir line, the Riggins faithfully named their sons and daughters after parents and grandparents. I currently have eight ancestors, all born within a few years in age of each other, named Teague Riggin in my family tree.

Map of Somerset County, Maryland, circa 1795

It was at this point in my research that I confused myself beyond reason. Several of these Riggin ancestors were of an age to serve in the Revolutionary War. A review of those records, showed no one named Riggin with which I was familiar. So I went to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) website and searched for a Riggin patriot. I found three, named Francis, Stephen and James. I do not believe at this time, that the James who fought for a Delaware regiment is my James Riggin. But I did download the three applications that used Stephen Riggin as their patriot ancestor as he fought in the Somerset County Militia.

For several days I traced the lineages provided by the three ladies who became DAR members using Stephen Riggin as their patriot ancestor, gathering source citations to validate their research along the way. As I worked backwards, I was, of course, trying to connect them to my Riggin extended family in Somerset County.

When I got to John Riggin, last person on their lineages, all I learned was he wrote a will in 1747. At first I believed this John Riggin did not tie into my tree but rather was a descendant of a possible brother of the original Teague Riggin, who may have also come to the American colonies, but the records are in no way definitive on his existence.  Now I believe this John Riggin to be the John I have in my tree who was born about 1708 and wrote a will in 1747 which was probated in 1757. The date the will was written and the place it was filed being the only "proof" of that connection. In the sea of early Riggin genealogies on the Internet, I would be the only person making that connection, which is the source of my confusion.

Augustus Kerr Riggin, son of Harry Riggin;
image from the Past and Present of Menard
County by Robert Don Leavey Miller

Have I got it right or am I completely lost?

I have been researching how to think through and write a genealogical proof standard but have never done one before. I'd love to hear your thoughts on proof standards as I am in uncharted waters.

Can We Step up to the Challenge

How Are Your Analysis Skills?

 Background

Pat Richley-Erickson Aka DearMYRTLE posted a challenge to any of her followers/readers on her blog on 2nd April 2014 (1) .

In this post I want to discuss how I approached this, and how on reviewing, I discovered I had issues when analysing my sources.

If you are not aware I am one of the panellists discussing Mastering Genealogical Proof (2) in Study Group 2 a hangout on air recording being held on Sundays. (Schedule available on DearMYRTLE blog (3)) So this challenge is putting any knowledge I have retained from these discussions to the test.

Preparation

Deciding what to write about to create an interesting but not too lengthy post was my first challenge. I have plenty of sources but which ones do I use and should I approach this as a new researcher should and decide on what question I wanted to answer. One might think this was an easy thing to do but like many new researchers I found these sources with an almost "scattergun" approach and it can take something to look at them outside of what is recorded in the standard genealogy software programs.

After at least one failed attempt this was the question I came up with " Who were the siblings and parents of my grandmother who was orphaned? ".

The 3 documents were a birth certificate, census and orphanage document.

Reasons for not publishing

Before I finished writing my post whilst in the process of writing my citations I realised that 2 of the sources I was about to use had the same author.

Both the Birth Certificate and the letter for the orphanage were created by the Superintendent Registrar for Warminster and he had signed both documents.

My original hypothesis to the question about what siblings my grandmother had would have been incorrect. I only ever knew she had one brother, if you look at the census record she is the youngest of 5 children (4). The next question was why had I only ever known the 1 brother.

I should have laid out what I knew about my grandmother and possibly cited this as personal knowledge. I could have also cited her son and daughters for the additional information they had provided.

Also, in retrospect, I had set a question whose parameters were much too broad.

My research question could have been as simple as When was my grandmother born? or Who were her parents?.

In my attempt to show what I had found I had not considered how I had got there.

The records I have contain a large amount of useful information, much of it can be classed as primary. But the number of documents I will need to cite, to fully build my conclusions for the question I originally posed, will most certainly exceed the three I was initially going to use.

I hope that this exercise has shown that we not only need to analyse the documents that we use but we need to think about how we obtained them and have they answered the question that we originally wanted to answer. Why the records were originally created, is a question we need to ask if we do not wanted to duplicate sources from the same informant.

So are YOU and your ANALYSIS SKILLS up to the CHALLENGE if so then please join in.

We can all benefit from peer review and even if you don't plan to publish your research in a recognised journal it is well worth it for the thought process it takes to put your case.

When I get more time in the coming week I hope to step up to this challenge and I will post a link in the comments. 

References

1. http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2014/04/the-ragu-challenge-3-2-1-cite.html
2. Thomas W. Jones, Mastering Genealogical Proof (Arlington, Virginia: National Genealogical Society, 2013), 6. [Book available from the publisher at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/mastering_genealogical_proof ]
3. http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2014/04/mgp2-still-on-chapter-5-but-working-on.html
4. 1901 census of England, Wiltshire, Warminster, Christchurch parish, folio 37 recto, p.9, household 53, Edmond Compton; digital image, Find My Past (http://new.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 5th April 2014) ; citing PRO RG13 /1943

Why I am getting organized? and how features of Family Historian have helped.

At the Beginning of the Year I published a post on my blog about how I am trying to get organized see [http://genemeet.blogspot.co.uk/].

From the popularity of the Facebook group, The Organized Genealogist,  I am not the only genealogist who is trying to get organized, or become more organized.
If you are a professional genealogist then of course it makes financial sense to be organized.
If like me you are a hobbyist then you probably have much less time to spend doing genealogy, unless you are "retired" you will likely have at least a part time job and family commitments that can also take up much of your time.

So why should I get organized

• I have limited time to research so I want to make the most of what time I have.
• If I am organized I can find items I want easily and quickly.
• When others ask about relatives I have in my online trees I can answer their queries in a more timely manner. 
• I have a lot of people in my WikiTree [http://www.wikitree.com/] and most of them need updating or the sources need cleaning up. Not everyone is properly sourced.
• I do not want to duplicate my research. 
• How many of us have at some point wasted time researching something/someone we have done previously. Have you got duplicates in your files?
• This is not to say we should not go back and repeat something where we had a negative result on an online database. Online databases are regularly adding new records and can be worth searching on a regular basis for those brickwalls.
• I have a lot of paper records some are original records, others just copies or printouts. 
• I need to get these onto my computer so that I do not overlook anything they contain.
• I have numerous photographs. If I scan and add metadata to the digital files I will know who is in these photographs and when they were taken. 
• As my older relatives may be the only ones to know who is in some of the older photographs I need to make this a priority before it is too late.
• I have upgraded from Custodian 3 to Custodian 4 [http://www.custodian4.co.uk/] . I have spent money on this upgrade and should make sure I spent this money wisely. It now has links to the media which was why I upgraded. 
• Whilst Family Historian [http://www.family-historian.co.uk/] links to media from individuals and sources Custodian is useful for those records you have not had chance to fully analyse or where you are not entirely sure where they fit in the tree.
• Custodian is a useful program for anyone doing a One Name Study[www.one-name.org/‎] or a One Place Study[one-place-studies.org/‎].
• I have also upgraded to Evidentia 2 [http://evidentiasoftware.com/] and as I am keen to make use of this program to analyse my sources I need to be able to find all my sources easily.
• Finally starting later this month I will be involved with MGP Study Group 2 [http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2013/11/call-for-panelists-dearmyrtles-mgp.html] I want to make the most of this opportunity and be ready to apply what I learn from sharing with others.

Let me tell you a bit more about how some of the feature of Family Historian have helped me with organization.

I have decide to go along the line of colour coding for the various lines of my tree which can be best illustrated by the fan chart below.

As a backup and for quick reference I have started, what some might consider a backward approach, by adopting a card index for basic family information using the same colour scheme (pink cards as no red available).

I have also used another facility available in Family Historian which is the named list.

Named lists can contain any record in the main record tabs of the program 

and notes can be added to each item in the list. The list report will show each of the notes added as illustrated below this report can be printed in various formats and allows the information to be sent to another device.

All the software programs I use have some powerful features many of which I have either not discovered or not used to any great extent. But as the volume of documents I have collected has expanded, I find that understanding what I am using,  and what features are available is becoming increasingly important. 

Do you use all the features of your software to assist your research? 

Could you benefit from understanding it better?

I attended a course on Family Historian for those with some knowledge and learnt that although I new a lot I was not an expert. If you get the chance to learn from others do so. It always helps to analyse why you are doing something and could you do things better.

A few ways in which you can learn from others from the comfort of your own home for free.

Google Hangouts or Hangouts on Air to view live, which may be available to view later on You Tube.

Genealogy Webinars see the calendar here http://blog.geneawebinars.com/

Geneablogs which you may not be aware of have a look here http://geneabloggers.com/

But you cannot beat the chance to speak to other like minded genealogists so if you can make it to a local fair, conference, jamboree or whatever they call it where you live then this will pay dividends.

Sharing and collaboration have always been part of being a family historian and even in these days of increasing online resources no one is an island. Make the most of others knowledge and above all enjoy yourself.

Next time I will discuss how I applied what I learnt at Hack Genealogy Boot Camp http://hackgenealogy.com/genealogy-groove-boot-camp-25-january-2014/