Slogging Along

It has been quite the wet week in our little part of Virginia. Downpours and flooding and lots of reasons to stay indoors when you don't have to go out.

It was a good week to get results from a professional genealogist whom I engaged to try to find information about you might be the father of my "brick wall" ancestor, James Madison Dehority (1819-1891) from Delaware.

I received 8 pages of data, an amazing amount found in just 4-5 hours in the Archives. It just goes to show how much more efficient are the folks who know the records of the time like the back of their hands. Some of the information I already knew, but much of it was new to me. He made an educated guess as to the likely candidate from what he found. Rats! This is not going to be a "smoking gun", can't be anyone else but kind of discovery, but a guess made based on a process of elimination.

What became evident very early on was that my organization of information in my FTM program by individual was not going to be the best way to embark on this hunt. So, I have spent every spare moment organizing what I have on the Dehortys of Delaware (sounds like the Kennedys of Massachusetts, doesn't it?....or Kelloggs of Battle Creek?...no, that's cereal). I decided to organize by census year and group land record and tax record between the given census years to help me zero in on the 1815-1820 time frame. Re-typing and sourcing all this info has been quite the slog this week, but I'm almost ready to merge the data from the professional research. I can only hope that it points with some certainty to one of the families.

I can only hope....