the case files
Where the tree was hard
A clean line reads as a list of names. A contested one has a document, an argument, and a moment where the answer changed — which is the only part a non-genealogist can actually follow. Six files, each one a place where this tree nearly went wrong, and the records that decided it. 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 dark pocket the dashboard could not see
A branch can average “fine” while a whole family inside it is dark. This is the story of a measurement failing, and a record answering.
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