the research moves
The tree behind this wing is a working research project, not an archive — it changes as records get read. This page notes what changed and when. The current published snapshot is 21 August 2026: 2,333 people, 383 sources. Back to The Family.
The downloadable tree now has its own page — what the GEDCOM file holds, what is deliberately kept out of it, and the honest caveat about importing conclusions — linked from the landing page and every cousin door. The download itself is unchanged: the same dated snapshot, rebuilt from the master tree after every research pass.
A hundred images of the family's own papers arrived from the Wiltshire archive: four wills of Peter Temple in his own hand, the deeds of his son Samuel's 1722 marriage, and the receipt box his widowed daughter-in-law kept for twenty years. They resolved a puzzle the tree had carried for weeks, corrected four names a London clerk miscopied in 1738, and are now told as one seven-generation story — from a chancel burial on the River Wylye to a fatherless boy on the Rappahannock — linked from the Temple room, with every uncertain joint marked in the text.
Eight shared Google Photos albums are now linked from the family rooms, the cousin doors, and three person pages — scanned photographs for both sides of the family, an album each for Thomas Lewis Latané Temple Jr and III, and one for Ada Mae Johnson Catchings. The photos stay on Google; the site carries the pointers.
A doorway for every cousin. Share my grandparents and half this wing is your direct ancestry; share great-grandparents and a quarter is. Each door lights up your shared wedges of the fan, counts the ancestors we have in common, and hands you your rooms — start at Which door is yours?, linked from the landing page.
Three stories finished in early August are finally live: the two fathers the Revolution took from the Carpenter line (Valley Forge and Blue Licks), Finding Ann Waring, and the honest story of the hanged rebel Anthony Arnold and the English father our tree had to un-invent. Every subject's person page now links their story.
The tree-journalist agent's first leads, written and published: Anastasia Catching's 1807 will, signed with her mark; Abner Fowlkes, home from the war with one year to live; and an honest answer to the Mayflower question, graded link by link. All three are linked from their family rooms.
Eight family rooms — the story, the people, the records shelf and the honest grades for each of the eight directions. Five case files from the research's hardest junctions. And the moment machine: pick any date and meet the living cohort.
2,333 person pages, one for every named deceased person in the published tree — vitals, parents with proof badges, record transcripts, research notes kept verbatim, and family links to walk the tree by. Plus the places index, and click-through from the fan and the atlas map.
The landing, the eight directions, the atlas and the deep-time poster, the people index, and the tree itself as a free download.
The whole-tree overview and six family posts published in the blog's History category — the reading room on the landing page links them all.