Merry Anne Pierson, left, and Susan Thomas host a lineage workshop
Merry Anne Pierson
The Judge David Campbell Chapter lineage workshop
The Judge David Campbell Chapter lineage workshop
The Judge David Campbell Chapter lineage workshop
The Judge David Campbell Chapter lineage workshop
Judge David Campbell Chapter, NSDAR, Inc., held their meeting at the Residence Inn at Hamilton Place Wednesday. The focus of the meeting was a lineage workshop. Merry Anne Pierson, Tennessee State Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Research chairman, and Susan Thomas, JDCC registrar and NSDAR national vice president, presented the workshop, Playing Hide and Seek with Elusive Ancestors - Suggestions for Alternate Proof Sources.
Ms. Pierson and Ms. Thomas tag-teamed to provide members and guests with information. In support of the slide presentation, handouts included a lineage worksheet and an Application Documentation Checklist, along with a fan chart to assisting in navigating through the ancestor-maze to determine a revolutionary patriot. Ms. Pierson provided a sheet of hot tips from the TNDAR Lineage Research Committee with ways to look for ancestors who seemed to have disappeared from history. Another reference, Ask a Genie, are DAR members who love genealogical research and offer their time to prowl state archives and county courthouses sleuthing out ancestral relationships for other daughters.
For research at home, both Ms. Thomas and Ms. Pierson recommended using Familysearch.com as a resource to trace lineage, along with the DAR Genealogical Research System and Ancestry.com. Another suggested internet source was Google, which contains a storehouse of information on ancestry, but we were warned to be aware of family trees and family histories generated by family historians which often may contain erroneous information. In providing documentation for membership in the DAR, all sources normally must be government-issued birth certificates, marriages certificates, and death certificates for deceased ancestor; however, alternate sources to determine relationships of family members may be gained from unusual sources such as chancery court records, bastard bonds, wills, especially ones that have a ‘love and affection’ transfer of property or legal notices in newspapers.
The workshop was followed by a luncheon and a short business session. To learn more about DAR, visit dar.org or email judgedavidcampbell@tndar.org.