ILMARION-L Archives

From: "Cheryl Rothwell" <>
Subject: Missing Ancestors
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 09:30:14 -0500

This is from "Genealogy Pointers," an email "newsletter" from Genealogical
Publishing Company, the company that gave us the free Researchers Guide to
American Genealogy. [If you missed that go to http://www.genealogical.com/
and scroll down to featured online book. Open the file and then save it to
your computer. It is a large .pdf file, well worth the download.] Their
point is to sell more CDs of course but this particular piece has food for
thought. There is a Dollarhide book on Migration Routes which provides good
information on such things.

*******

Here's a familiar genealogical conundrum. A researcher has traced his/her
ancestors from present-day California, through the Dust Bowl era in
Nebraska, into Missouri just as it was achieving statehood, and finally to
Indiana in the 1830s. At that point, the trail has grown bone cold even
though legend has it that the family patriarch was a Pennsylvania patriot
during the Revolution. So, how does the genealogist pick up the scent at
this point?

One possibility is by studying the various migration routes our ancestors
traveled to their new homes. For instance, before 1800, between Boston and
Charleston, South Carolina, our forebears followed one of a score or more of
tested land and/or river routes. Our hypothetical Pennsylvanian, for
example, might have traversed the Southern Road, from Philadelphia to
Baltimore, where he could pick up the National Road. This would have taken
him into western Maryland, briefly back into Pennsylvania, and then into
western Virginia (today West Virginia), before the road leveled off in Ohio
and Indiana. (By the 1830s, of course, canals and railroads were beginning
to compete with roads and turnpikes as the principal means of westward
transportation.)

If we know the most likely routes our "lost ancestors" could have taken from
the Eastern seaboard, we can begin to look for them in the so-called "feeder
states" or "stop-over states," where they quite likely established quarters
for a period of time--owing to reasons of topography, health, limited
resources, and so forth. Western New York, for instance, was an important
way station for New Englanders heading along the Great Genesee Road to Ohio,
and Kentucky was an important "feeder state" for persons traversing the
"Wilderness Road" to Missouri, as was Tennessee for persons intent upon
Arkansas.

***********

Cheryl Rothwell

Logan County ILGenWeb www.rootsweb.com/~illogan
Central IL Regional Coordinator, ILGenWeb
Clark, Downing, Harding, Lucas, et al

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• Missing Ancestors by "Cheryl Rothwell" <>