Making the Paths Straight

If you can, you should enlist everyone that you can to help in your research.  Sure, you can do a lot of work yourself, but you can't beat the manpower and resources of a group of people working together.
This is especially important where costs are involved.  Eventually, to make progress, you're going to have to travel.  But what if you know someone who is going to the area you need to research?

My mom and aunts recently traveled to Arizona and New Mexico to have a look at the areas my grandfather was born into, and research his family there.  Boy oh boy did they bring back one doozy of a puzzle for me.
From my grandfather, the family in question is this one:

(3)  Henry Eugene Stodghill (1928 - 1990)
(4)  Jessie Mae Gibson (1904 - 1972)
(5)  Joseph George Gibson (1871 - 1939)
- married -
(5)  Effie Mabel Cook (1879 - 1861)

Since it tends to be helpful, here's a photo of the family unit in question (Jessie Mae is the oldest child here):

My mom and aunts revealed to me something I didn't know: Joseph George Gibson wasn't Effie Mabel Cook's first husband.  Effie had three children; Joseph was the father of the last two.  Family tradition held that Jessie Mae Gibson was actually the child of Joseph's twin, Moses W Gibson.
That was a name I had seen before on Jessie Mae's death certificate, but I had ruled it out as being an error because I could clearly see the family unit in the 1910 Census.  Again, though, here was the name Moses W Gibson.
I took a look through Joseph George Gibson's family (his father was Joseph Smith Gibson), but was unable to find a Moses.  However, Joseph had an uncle named Moses Washington Gibson, who also had a son named Moses Washington Gibson.
I remained skeptical of the link until my mom and aunts sent me an image from the Clerk's Office in Sierra County, New Mexico, of a marriage record from 1896:

There it was in black and white.  Effie had been married to Moses in 1896.  Note the city of origin for Moses: Grafton, NM.  This was a mining community (as was Fairview, where Effie was living).  In 1900 Moses is living in yet another mining community with his family, which has moved out of Utah.  Jessie Mae Gibson's death certificate states that Moses was born in Utah:

This Moses Washington Gibson is the only Moses Gibson in the 1880 Census who was born in Utah.  All of the above heavily implies that this Moses was the father of Jessie Mae Gibson.
That changes my lineage to this:

(3)  Henry Eugene Stodghill (1928 - 1990)
(4)  Jessie Mae Gibson (1904 - 1972)
(5)  Moses Washington Gibson (1874 - 1918)
- married -
(5)  Effie Mabel Cook (1879 - 1861)

I *still* haven't found any record of a marriage to Joseph George Gibson, either.  Something weird happened after 1896, between 1903, when Jessie Mae is born, and 1907, when Joseph and Effie's first child is born.  In 1900 Effie is listed as married in 1896 on the Census, but she is living with her parents and her husband isn't listed.  Moses Washington Gibson is in Arizona, living with his parents, marked as single.  Moses marries in 1901, and dies in 1918.
My *suspicion* is that the Gibson family was still practicing plural marriages after the 1890 Manifesto banned it.  It wasn't until the Second Manifesto in 1904 that members of the church started getting excommunicated for it.  I suspect the Gibsons did the only thing they could think of to ensure the family's survival both practically and religiously: they assigned Jessie Mae Gibson to a previously unmarried cousin.  I suspect the "twin" story was cooked up in an effort to explain Moses' name on the records...it would have been Joseph and they just made a mistake.
Anyway, this issue isn't quite settled yet.  I think that, given the timing, my explanation is highly likely, but I haven't exactly proven it yet.

Lineages

As your research continues, you should take some time to look for lineage societies you qualify for membership in and attempt to join them.  These can serve a couple of purposes:

• They force you to thoroughly document your pedigree, and teach you to look at your family documentation in much more depth.
• They allow an external, uninterested party to approve/"certify" that part of your pedigree.
• Most lineages have been documented by someone other than you before, and you can benefit from this prior documentation.  This includes ancestors, and possibly more information on the qualifying ancestor and their descendants leading to you.

There's one more benefit that I'm not as fond of, but it may work for you:

• They can appeal to your vanity.

As you research, also remember not to count out personal genealogies that were written in prior centuries.  A genealogy written in 1800, for example, can probably be trusted to adequately document the family one century prior at least, even if it doesn't provide citations, because much of the information probably comes from direct knowledge.

I have one particular branch of my family that is very rich from a lineage point of view.  The pedigree starting from my grandfather:

(3)  Henry Eugene Stodghill (1928 - 1990) / Adele Ann Pembroke (1930 - 2006)

(4)  Henry Eugene Stodghill (1906 - 1993) / Jessie Mae Gibson (1904 - 1972)

(5)  Walter S. Stodghill (1871 - 1949) / Pearl Sutton (1880 - 1956)

(6)  John Joseph Stodghill (1831- 1912) / Margaret Ellen Thomson (1839 - 1896)

(7)  John Preston Thomson (1787 - 1843) / Sarah Sallie Ellis (1797 - 1871)

(8)  William Thomson (1759 - 1818) / Frances Quarles (1762 - 1844)

From here I connect to four known lineages depending on whether I follow the Thomson or Quarles family.  The Quarles family is simpler, so I'll start with them:

(9)  William Quarles (1733 - 1794) / Mary Mills (1743 - 1779)

William Quarles served honorably as a soldier during the American Revolutionary War, as documented by Daughters of the American Revolution.

The Thomson family, on the other hand, provides three other lineages:

(9)  William Thomson (1727 - 1778) / Ann Rodes (1734 - 1802)

William Thomson served honorably as a Captain of a Virginia regiment of volunteers during the American Revolutionary War, as documented by Sons of the American Revolution.

Ann Rodes is a descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne, as documented by the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States.  This pedigree alone allows me to stretch my ancestry back along a specific branch to around 742 A.D. (when Charlemagne was born).

A few steps further up the tree:

(10)  John Rodes (1697 - 1775) / Mary Crawford (1703 - 1794)

(11)  David Crawford II (1662 - 1762) / Elizabeth Smith (1665 - 1767)

Besides he and his wife living to be 100+ years, David Crawford served in the House of Burgesses as documented by the Jamestowne Society.

I'm currently in the process of applying to each of these orders to approve my claims of lineage.  My local SAR chapter genealogist has helped me to complete my Sons of the American Revolution application; once that's approved I'll probably move on to the Jamestowne Society.

Genetic Genealogy

In talking with others who have looked into their genealogy, I've discovered that genetic genealogy is frequently overlooked.  Yesterday I had a conversation with the owner of a store that I frequent and he mentioned having hit a brick wall with his genealogy on his family name past his great-grandfather, who abandoned the family.  He knew the family line was either English or Irish, since permutations of it exist in both locations, but he didn't know which it was.
I asked him if he had thought of having his Y-DNA tested, and he indicated he didn't even know about that.  I explained to him how a Y-DNA would probably be able to tell him where his family came from, and possibly their migration patterns.

My own DNA tests have only come back in the last month and are already resulting in new information.  My patrilineal pedigree from my grandfather:

(3)  Ralph Gomez (b. 1917 Mexico d. 1989 Sacramento, CA)
(4)  Benjamin Gomez (b. 1895 Mexico d. ???)

I have a border crossing document from the family dated in 1922 stating that they last resided in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico.  My uncles say that Ralph claimed that the family was from "a small town south of Mexico City."  Despite my searching so far, I have yet to find any records of the family in Mexico, so it's difficult to know where exactly they originated in Mexico.  All I know is that Ralph wasn't born in Tepic or the few cities I've had time to look through the documents from (or, at least, it's not reflected in the preserved documents).
The lack of information prompted me to order a Y-DNA37 test from Family Tree DNA, the results of which I've received.
Initially I was underwhelmed with the information I received.  Literally, if you're expecting your results to give you new information, you'll be disappointed.  About all I learned was that I was part of haplogroup J2, and that I was likely to be from J2a4b1 specifically because all of my genetic cousins were from this type.

However, I joined three research groups shortly after receiving my results:
J Haplogroup Project
Gomes Surname Project
Mexico DNA Project
Each of these projects has a different research focus for looking at the DNA of the members, so have provided different information.  I've learned the following facts so far:

• The Gomez name has wide-spread genetic origins (meaning multiple male origins, not all of which are haplogroup J2).  This was initially very confusing to me, until I learned the second item...
• Mexican culture has a long tradition of inheritance of the matrilineal name, especially in the colonial era.  Gomez was the last name of one of my female ancestors prior to it becoming a patrilineal name.
• Because of this matrilineal name inheritance, I share a common patrilineal ancestor some time back with families that have the surnames Ramirez, Soto, Gomez, and Gonzalez (these are just the ones that are known).
• The family appears to be primarily from southern Mexico and Central America.  All roads appear to lead back to Jalisco, Mexico as the source of the family.
• The genes are ultimately Semitic.

That's all I know so far, but it's waaaaaaaaaaaay more than I knew before, and is a reason to contact that Ramirez in my list of close matches (I initially wrote that connection off because he didn't share my family name).

And it's all within a month!

Pearl Stodghill

One thing I really hate is when I come across a record for a female ancestor and her maiden name field is filled in with her married name.  There have been a few cases I found where maiden name matched married name, but in every other case, it's worse than useless.

My mother's maiden name is Stodghill.  This name turns out to have a long, interesting history in the United States, and links me into documented lineages for groups like the Sons of the American Revolution, the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States, and the Jamestowne Society.  I'm particularly interested in the ancestors who brought this name to me, though.
One of these families was Walter S. Stodghill (b. 10 Jan 1871 d. 4 Mar 1949) and Pearl Stodghill (b. 9 Feb 1880 d. 6 Jun 1956).  These were the names as I discovered them, and Pearl's last name was a frustration to me.

Everything I knew about Pearl came from her death certificate.  She was born in Kentucky.  She died in Arizona.  Her parents were listed as "Unk".  Her birth year presented problems related to finding out who she was.
For one, there wasn't a record of a "Pearl" of the appropriate age in the 1880 Census in Kentucky.  For those of you new to genealogy, the 1890 Census is largely unavailable due to its having been destroyed in a fire, so there was no way to find her at age 10.  I haven't located her in the 1900 Census yet (Walter is still living with his parents in Kentucky and listed as "Single").  The first record I have of her is in 1910, when she's married to Walter, and has two children, Henry and Jewell.

Arizona's vital record access is spectacular.  Apparently the LDS has made inroads with the state government so that they could index all available vital records and place them online in a publicly-accessible database.  This made it possible for me to retrieve all of the birth and death records for the family.
I already had the documents for my direct lineage, so I knew that Henry's death certificate wouldn't give me any more information about Pearl.  However, Jewell died at the age of 19, so her parents filled her death certificate out, and there I found my first clues about Pearl.
The handwriting was bad, but Pearl's maiden name was there.  It was either Sutton or Sutter.
This particular question was relatively easy to answer.  I looked through the 1880 Census and couldn't find any Sutter families nearby where she and Walter would have originated from.  However, I *did* find Sutton families.  Therefore, her maiden name was Sutton.
Pearl Sutton!

I still had a problem, though.  There wasn't any record of Pearl Sutton in the 1880 Census!
Sometimes Census records (or any records, really) use middle names instead of first names.  I didn't know Pearl's middle name, so I decided to look at the families in the area who had children under the age of 1.

And there I found, in the city of Greensburg, a family headed by Reuben Sutton (b. 1850 d. 22 Jun 1939), with two children, "No Name Sutton" and "Baby Sutton".
Those names are a sure-fire indication that the information on this family was provided by someone other than the family itself (probably a neighbor).  But...
Baby Sutton was 4 months old and female.  The Census was performed in June 1880.  Pearl, being born in February, would have been exactly 4 months old.  I can't be sure of it, but this strongly points to Pearl having been born in Greenburg.

I had found both Pearl's maiden name and her family!

Introduction

Well here we are...another blog.  I suppose I should talk about why I'm starting this blog.
No living member of my family has put a significant amount of effort into genealogical research.  I remember asking my grandparents about my ethnic identity and family history.  Nobody really knew the history.  My mom told me the family on her side was English and Irish (she was *mostly* right).  Sofie (my paternal grandmother) was obviously German.  Ralph (my paternal grandfather) told me his family was ultimately Native American (boy was *he* wrong).
The easy parts of my research are done.  All of the documents and pictures stored by the family have been reviewed, every online indexed document has been retrieved, I've had portions of my DNA analyzed, etc, etc.  Now it's time for the real work of tracking down scraps of paper and sharing research with others.

So, there's the real goal: I want to share research.  I'm hoping that God will smile upon me and some of the names and dates I post in this blog will attract the eyes of Google searchers who have parts of the puzzle that I do not.
Guess we'll see how that works out for me.