"Richard A. Pence" wrote: > > > (I KNOW there was one there somewhere in our family, but can't find > > them ANYWHERE!!!!) > > Dena: > > If you can't find "them" ANYWHERE, how do you KNOW "there was one > there somewhere"? > > Aside from "the three brothers" and "the name was changed at Ellis > Island," the most commonly believed (and rarely true) family > tradition in American genealogy is the one about Indian (aka "Native > American") ancestry. > > Like most other genealogical puzzles, the solution likely lies in > carefully tracing each generation back. If you then encounter a > person whose background might lead you to believe the person could > be an Indian, then this is the time and the place to try to > determine the details. How is one supposed to know that? I have a pile ... a large pile ... of dead ends in counties created in Georgia and Alabama in the late 18th and early 19th century as the Cherokee and Creek lands dwindled. This alone says that while they might have come into these lands from Georgia or the Carolinas or even (as we know is true) Scotland, they well may have been there all along. The question is, how do we find out? > The essence of these discussions is that it is usually a > losing strategy in genealogy to set out trying to prove your are > related to some specific person - be he or she rich, famous, an > Indian or a horse thief. Well, I tried that with Pocahontas and proved conclusively that one of her grandchildren was my aunt unpteen times removed. One teensy little generation off! And it's not terribly silly to try to prove connections with famous people if you know for sure that there is only one missing generation to prove or disprove. Usually it is very easy to disprove, and in every case but two I have done so, but there is that one nagging one that mildly reputable sources imply that I simply cannot disprove. So I might as well keep looking. Doug McDonald Doug McDonald <mcdonald@scs.uiuc.edu>