Dear Cousins, Where to begin with multi-generations of people with the same names. Uncles, Cousins, Fathers, Grandfathers -- how do we begin to determine which is which? The great historian Henry Adams (descendant of two Presidents) decided that he would begin at a perfect point of unity in history and work forward into the 20th century with its great multiplicity. He picked the period between 1150 and 1250, which he noted was when the Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (two of the greatest architectural wonders of the world) were begun. Adams' theory of history is based on the second law of thermodynamics. Words like thermodynamics scare me, so essentially the 2nd law as applied to history means that it keeps getting broader and broader and finally dissipates altogether in a great 4th of July rocket burst of glorious sky-filling color. We can easily compare this to the present-day family historians' gedcom dilemma: As increasing numbers of persons are incorporated into these gedcoms, facts lose meaning, uncles replace sons, mothers marry sons-in-law. The widening gyre! The center cannot hold! I encountered this phenomena about ten years ago with information about my Maryland families, and sought, within a surname organization, to find answers where there were none. The surname organization could neither provide solutions, nor correct the problems they had created themselves. They decided to make bigger and better gedcoms until they had nearly 70,000 names in a massive computer mess. So where do we go from here? The answer is not to create massive lists of names, but to begin with a fact, work out from that fact and add not names, but identities and facts to the information one knows to be accurate. The Mont Saint Michel was not built in a day, and it will endure. I have slept there! We have begun this new process with Levi "The Quaker" Pennington. We can do the same with each piece of information we find about each ancestor. We must treat these people as individuals not as the progenitor of 5,000 descendants. There seems to me to be some great discrepancy in Levi's identity, and I believe it comes from somehow confusing Levi with Levi Jr. and Levi III, then compounding it by confusing who Martha b. 1714 was married to. This study is meant to educate, and re-educate each of us in using primary information to determine identity. You may have no interest in the lineage of Levi the Quaker, but you can learn a great deal if you participate -- or at least follow -- the process of re-establishing his identity. The process will include records on your own families, because almost all of us come (in some degree) from people who lived in the cricks and hollers of SW Virginia and NW North Carolina, and THEY came from the Delaware Valley. Indians were the only people born in Kentucky or Ohio or Missouri in the early 1700's. In the process of re-identitying Levi The Quaker we will begin re-identitying our own displaced, misnamed, blotted-out ancestry. These pockets of information do not fall into easy county or even state defined areas. That is why I have established the perimeters. In every area where state and counties had confusing beginnings or boundaries were contested, there is naturally confusion with the residents. This happened with every frontier: Both DE and NJ were first part of PA. In the Cecil Co., MD/Chester Co., PA area -- the whole border was 40 miles off until the 1730's, affecting the Nottingham Quakers and others living in that area. In Western PA the border counties were disputed by Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Further down the road, Kentucky was Virginia. North Carolina was Virginia. On and on. Relying on where early people say they were born is an iffy thing. My Alfred Watts was never sure on any census whether he was born in KY or TN. TN was Kentucky! Now the point of this is: Get hold of a fact about your ancestor. Examine it. What does it mean? What does it help you determine about him? Sometimes the facts come from a generation or two before or after him. In the Levi study, we have taken what is known about Levi and we have tried to work outward from it. The information is from other researchers and we have remained within the framework of that information. Now we must start evaluating the information we have gained on our own and start re-integrating our own picture of Levi. We can do that by eliminating iffy and incorrect information as we go along. I will start putting up some FACTS today for you to ponder. Also, we will begin several new Cousins' Pages. I hope finally to get up Cousin Leigh's Page, along with Cousin Cari in CA, Cousin Jim, and Cousin Ric. As we start putting DATA together, please re-think how to make references. Saying something came from the census is not a reference. Nor is giving the IGI (the master files of the LDS or Mormon Church) a reference. The IGI is not a fact; it is not data: it is information sent in by LDS members on people they have researched, and some dates and names have been copied from the census and county records. The census is not a fact, although providing the copy of the enurmeration would be. And on and on. We can use all of these things as a basis of searching further, but they are not references. I have found references to Carolyn Co., VA: flattering in some obscure way, but Caroline is correct. Another is Albermarie for Albermarle, county home for Thomas Jefferson. And spelling Boutetourt correctly challenges me, too! Last week in a message board I found a woman who gave her ancestor's name as FNUK LUNK. I shook my head and went on to the next message thread, where she acknowledged (embarassed) that she had copied her computerized gedcom's acronym for "First Name Unknown" and "Last Name Unknown." Dear Cousins, we have met the Enemy and he is US! I believe computers have brought us to Henry Adam's prediction of historical dissipation. Yet I can find more information on the internet in a day than what would have taken years the old way. We must begin to restablish what is correct, and we can publish it on the internet at the American Crossroads website. Participate! Give cousins our Website and List address! Help us revitalize this process! Come, let us reason together! Communicate! Network! Help! Pass this message on instead of one of those chain letters! Love, Your Cousin, Carolyn Carolyn McDaniel cmacdee@teleport.com ========================================= To send a message to the American Crossroads List: AMXROADS-L@rootsweb.com --- Visit American Crossroads --- http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~amxroads