Enoch Thomson (1784-1872), farmer and part-time Baptist preacher, Sullivan County, Indiana |
The best part of being quarantined is that “it eliminates my need to make excuses for working on my family history” says Shirley. After many years of searching and not finding the desired connection, Shirley decided to hire the CGS Research team to help with her quest. That decision was made in February of 2020, shortly before the quarantine began. Initially, hiring the research team – that includes Lavinia Schwarz and Pat Smith – increased Shirley’s workload. As the team of researchers dug in, they presented Shirley with lots of questions. Shirley was very busy answering their questions starting in February and into the early weeks of the quarantine. Since then she has taken a bit of a break from genealogy.
I asked how she managed to come up with new questions to ask after fifty years of searching – how does she formulate new questions that enable her to approach the problem from a different perspective? Her answer was prompt and emphatic: “Oh, that’s easy, because technology gives us new opportunities all the time’” When asked for an example, Shirley said she has three pages of names of other Thomson descendants who are doing research on this same family. She was able to print this out from the GEDmatch.com site. The report lists people who match Enoch’s autosomal DNA. She can refine the list and see their ancestral lines and what they are focused on. Using their GEDCOM identification number she can compare them to other matches to her husband. Studying this information continues to provide new clues.
Enoch’s son Reuben Thomson (1827-1907) with his wife Margaret McKinney and nine grown children, mid-1800s |
If you have a Quarantine Quests story to share, please contact Chris at [email protected].
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2020