Twigs to Trees

March, 2024

Mary Helen Haines

 

Greetings from Texas. April 20 will be our Annual Members Meeting and this year it will be in my backyard. Not literally, but about 45 minutes away from my house. I am looking forward to meeting some of our Texas members and anyone else who is able to come visit.

I have just been reminded of the importance of using primary source documents for verification of names and other information. For years I have in my family tree that Robert McFarland, b. abt. 1730 in Pennsylvania, was married to a Martha because of secondary sources that listed Martha as his wife signing deed documents. They were selling land in Virginia while living in Orange Co. NC. Now that familysearch.org has digitized so many of their records, there was no excuse to not look for the original document. So, even though I trusted the secondary sources, written by very reputable authors, when I found the original document it clearly showed the wife’s name as Margaret. That kind of mistake also applies to Robert’s father, so-called “Scotland” John. I have no idea when, if ever, that mistake will ever be completely rectified. There actually was a John McFarlane who was born in Scotland, and lived in the same area of western Virginia, but that was a completely different man, John Stewart McFarlane who married Elizabeth Campbell; not John McFarland, married to Mary Montgomery.  That “Scotland” John nickname goes back to George Cleek’s book in the 1950s, who mixed all the McFarlands of the area together into one family.

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