This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: AdamWylieKin Surnames: Miller White Brown Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.southcarolina.counties.chester/580.1449.1.2.1.2.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: As to the last two posts here 51 and 52, I try to respond respectfully while continuing to proselytise on my concerns of premature conclusions becoming the rule in genealogy, rather than a rare exception. You have indeed spent productive time with Andrea's records. Would that we had scans of all the originals which were the source of his Miller research. If as you say, Andrea says, Elizabeth Miller passed land to Charles Miller, get the deed (or other proof such as a deed out by Charles reciting the source of his title) and then run the legal back to see if it is land owned by a Josiah Miller or the like, if the deed does not disclose this. Such a deed almost certainly should be there. Otherwise suppositions such as the one you made on only one Elizabeth Miller at that time, will often lead to the wrong side of a cliff situated at a forbidding height with nothing immediately below. I descend from an Elizabeth, different maiden name than Hindman but Hindman is not mentioned in your reference, Miller in the general area, who was born 1738 and died in York District in 1826. Widows often lived with families and were sometimes declared and enumerated as head of the household from 1790 to 1840, where the family was that of her children and sometimes not, where the eldest son had claimed control or been given it, or the widow was! living with her own blood-related siblings or their descendants who were findable only under her maiden name or some other surname, being that of a sister or cousin. So only a deed is strong enough to establish likelihood as to this set of facts, or some other clear unequivocal, mainly unambiguous connecting document, even for an area still growing such as Chester. Miller is a most common name and in 1790 though there were only five of that name spelling or variant in Chester (and York and other surrounding counties must sometimes be considered), they were ones including a Charles Miller whose wife could have been Elizabeth Miller and a widow by the end of the year 1790 or near the end of a decade as well as a Robert Miller, William Miller and Robert Millar each like Charles with minor sons, and each more than able to be married to a soon-to-be widow Elizabeth, either a mother of the children of step-mother to all of them. None of these Millers need to be related (just check the origin of the name throughout the English speaking world to realize how it is one of the most common names in America even now, many of whom came to America as! a Mueller or Muller), but we do know to suspect that the Elizabeth might well be Elizabeth Hindman/Hyndman Miller, widow of Josiah (and might not be as well!!). Thus the real estate transaction you relate to happening can be tracked readily (hopefully), and the land can be traced back to a root of title from the sovereign, or the USA, with a bit more difficulty. If that root of title has someone with a name anything like Josiah than you have a strong start, exactly Josiah and you could win under most any standard of proof. Since I have claimed the five 1790 Chester enumerated Miller/Millar families could well all be truly unrelated, clearly I have stronger views on the Chester County/District Millens (who if consistently Millens are more likely to be related to McMillens then Millers) and the Millings vis-a-vis Chester Millers. Ironically your message was seen by me after I started this morning posting another attempt to draw rational conclusions rather than speculation stated as certainty from the membership (and from their interpretation of postings on the www and worse yet in print, or on disk, which some take as documentation by its very existence) at my private MyFamily sites, adding this as the title to the post as well as a new explicit category for all to ponder: "Explanation of limit(ations)s of conclusions from documented name appearance" with the context here being NARA Revolutionary War rosters. You need the name of a spouse which can be close to conclusive if it is a full name, or the chain of title or ... to fairly attach your ancestry to any family, much less a family such names with current frequency likely to occur in frontier America such as 1) SMITH 1.006%; 2) JOHNSON 0.810%; 3) WILLIAMS 0.699%; 4) JONES 0.621%; 5) BROWN 0.621%; 6)DAVIS 0.480%; 7) MILLER 0.424%; 8) WILSON 0.339%; 9 MOORE 0.312%; 10) TAYLOR 0.311%; 11) ANDERSON .311%; 12) THOMAS 0.311%; 13) JACKSON 0.310%; 14) WHITE 0.279%; 15) HARRIS 0.275%; 16) MARTIN 0.273%; 17)THOMPSON 0.269%; [OMITTED] GARCIA 0.254%; [OMITTED] MARTINEZ 0.234%; 18) ROBINSON 0.233%; 19) CLARK 0.231%; 20)LEWIS 0.226%; [taken from http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.all.last] might well be present repeatedly but whether it is by coincidence is much more uncertain then when a county such as Chester and the one next to it York begin filling up with Wylies who make it these days at #2905 WYLIE and only 0.004%. And as a final attempt to dissuade any conclusions that there was only one Elizabeth Miller (one more Miller family might have arrived in 1792 is another way) is the fact that I descend from Samuel Neely of the area who is not the Samuel Neely of the area, Oliver Wallace who is not the Oliver Wallace of the area (in fact there may have been three or maybe four in the general areas of the same general age) but fortunately also from William Ratchford, for whom there are several appearances in America but only one in South Carolina or even the Carolinas. But even with the uncommon name Wylie, particularly with William or James or ..., Sarah or Elizabeth or ..., does one stop and say "must be mine" when there is more to be done in the record searching (and not even when there is no more to be done there, for there is always DNA and there is always the right path and to admit more must be found before anything can be said with sufficient certainty). Oh yes and one more thing: William White is the only son of Ann Garner White and not the spouse of this lady as you wrote it---the spouse was John White. I have a private and free MyFamily site for William White descendants and spouses (really for all John and Ann Garner White descendants who would be welcome as well) to allow them to find out, among other things, who really was their secondary matriarch, the spouse of William White who had the classic name of Jane Brown and would be thought to have been untraceable prior to review of many of the facts that point to one conclusion for her parentage, making her my esteemed presumptively blood-related (DNA results possibly later contradicting) great great great grand aunt (she is one of the remarkable Elizabeth Ellet's "Women of the Revolution" as Jane White of Chester area). Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. 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