Danny, what a gem you are. You know, my mom used to have a saying, "if they were caught in my trap, they belong to me". In her case she was referring to her Baker kin. If they looked, acted, smelled like Bakers, and hung out with Bakers, they must be Bakers. LOL. Funny you should use Smith as an example, I've found 4 distinctly different Smith families that are unrelated to each other but all connected to my kin somewhere or the other. Well, I've been working on the premise that if Robert Magby named three of his sons William, Joel and Jefferson and William's two daughters wound up in the household of James A. Baker, Margaret Magby's husband, and if Margaret and James named two of their sons William and Joel Jefferson, then even if they weren't related, they really knew each other really, really well. I agree that in some cases, there will be some documents that if they existed at one time may have been destroyed long ago. My branch of the family moved so much all that survived were verbal stories. I'm wondering if a different scenario might have existed actually. Vardry McBee was a clerk in Lincoln co NC, and witnessed many of my mom's maternal line marriages, the Magbys are on her Paternal line. I don't know what connection Elijah (d. 1814) has to Vardry, but if the connection to Elijah includes Robert, then maybe knowing that there were several branches out there, they may have used Elijah's name to distinguish which branch we hailed from. Vardry was found in Robert's household in 1840. So its a given that they at least knew each other. Ali United we stand, divided we fall. God Bless America!! From: McBee49@aol.com Reply-To: MCBEE-L@rootsweb.com To: MCBEE-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [McBEE] Documentation versus Word of Mouth Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 23:00:02 EST Ali, you and I agree on circumstantial evidence. I am a genealogist that believes in "Leap of Faith". Prior to 1850, genealogy is a crap shoot at best. We only knew who the head of household was. Linking a child to a family couldn't really be done prior to 1850. I get so amazed at people who HAVE to have documentation. I believe in documentation as much as you can document it. Any information written down had to come from someone somewhere. What makes that information any more correct than information written down now by someone in this century. I have so many people who ask about "Documentation". If you are a Mellard and your family lived in Charleston, you can assume (usually quite correctly) that you are related to most of the Mellards from Charleston. Not all Smiths are related to all Smiths but I am sure you see what I am saying. My suggestion is to use that "Leap of Faith" if you must. Qualify it as a leap of faith. Bridge the gap and then work to strengthen your bridge. Have a great day. Danny. ==== MCBEE Mailing List ==== To Unsubscribe: Click on <mailto:McBee-L-request@rootsweb.com> to create a new message with UNSUBSCRIBE as the *only* text in the message, and as the subject. Contact Valorie <mailto:McBee-admin@rootsweb.com> with any questions, list problems, or virus warnings. ============================== Visit Ancestry's Library - The best collection of family history learning and how-to articles on the Internet. http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp