three posts from four years ago I did as part of an exercise we did in the Genealogists
in Second Life group four years ago. Afterward I'll discuss what I've found recently
and revise my Tchart for him.))
The Genealogists in Second Life have started a Just Genealogy Book Club and
we're working through Val D. Greenwood's The Researcher's Guide to
American Genealogy, 3rd Edition (Genealogical Publishing Co. 2000) and I'm
finding it very informative. This past week we covered the chapters on
"Analyzing Pedigree and the Place" and "Evaluation of Evidence"(chapters
4 & 5). In the section on Pedigree Analysis Mr Greenwood suggested using
what he calls a "Tchart". Basically you draw a line down the center of the
piece of paper and one side label "What do I already know" and "What does
this suggest?" I decided I'd like to try that out.
I chose 5x greatgrandfather Caleb Coburn as my guinea pig.(Forgive me,
Grandpa Caleb!). Then I wasted an hour or so hunting around for a two column
template I could use on one of my word processor programs. When that
failed, I tried making one from scratch which wasted more time. Finally I gave
up and went back to basics, pen and paper. So be warned: this isn't the
prettiest graphic you'll ever see:
I chose Caleb because I hadn't found a death date for him nor have I ever found
the name of his wife. I printed his name at the top of the page and included all
the various spellings I've encountered for Coburn, and then started listing on the
left side of the page what I already knew : his birth in Dracut, Ma on 12 Dec 1738,
the birth of his son Moses in Tyngsborough, Ma in 1765 and where he was
enumerated on the 1790, 1800, and 1810 Federal Census. There was also a
Caleb Coburn enumerated on the 1820 Fishersfield Nh Federal Census but I
had questions about that one.(which may account for my mangling the name of the
town in my list)
And of course, he died, (Unless Caleb was an immortal vampire or alien) but
I'd found no date or place for that as of yet.
So, what did that all this suggest? As you can see, initially, not a heck of lot. But
we'll get to that next post,
1 comment:
Coburn is interesting to me also, not as a surname, but a place name in Canada, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. I have an ancestor whose family left New York after 1815 and I found them in Coburn, Canada. Fast forward 30 years and they are in Wisconsin, and one of the grand kids moves to Montana. One to Minnesota, has kids and also moves to Montana in the little town of Columbus. In reading the town history I find TWO more families from Coburn, Canada.
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