the case files
Where the tree was hard
Each of these files takes one claim that circulates in published pedigrees and online trees — a grafted English father, a castle, a merge, a birth year — and follows the records through to where it actually stands. They are written so the thread can be followed by anyone who carries the line: the claim you may have met, what the documents say in order, the verdict, and what to change in your own tree. Six files so far; more are added as thickets are cleared. Back to The Family.
The ancestor who wrote his own pedigree
Two different kinds of wrong in one line: a nineteenth-century genealogist inventing upward out of vanity, and a twenty-first-century interface inventing sideways out of convenience.
from The Carpenters
What you lose is a castle; what you gain is a document
A 1643 jury verdict takes the castle away. A 1749 census gives back something better.
from The Plunketts
The merge that would have destroyed a generation
Two women who looked exactly like one person duplicated — and the two governments, thirty-four years apart, that proved they were two.
from The Plunketts
The real rebel and the invented ancestor
A man hanged in 1677 is over-documented. The English clergyman placed above him never existed in this family at all.
from The Temples
The father who would have been three years old
The tree gave Thomas Jones of Essex County a birth year that made him three when his first daughter was born, and a wife who never existed. Two courthouse books put both right.
from The Temples
The son who is not in the will
This tree said eleven children. The will said eleven children. Ten of them were the same people.
from The Temples