Well said. I am not a Jett researcher but I could change the name to Edmonds in Fauquier Co and the same would apply. Sent from my iPhone On Aug 18, 2010, at 12:18 AM, FamilyHistoryBK@aol.com wrote: > No one really knows where many of the 18th Century Jetts came from, and I > hope that some of my online speculation has not led others to draw > conclusions. Jett genealogy is like a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle with 30 missing > pieces. You just can’t put it together until you have more parts. > > That is not going to happen until we throw out all the secondary and > hearsay sources, and instead accumulate in one place all of the facts that are > based on reliable sources. Then the Jett “crowd” may collectively put > together the puzzle that an individual might find impossible. > > For example, let’s take the year 1760. We know that there were at least > three men named James Jett alive in Virginia that year. One of them ended > up, fairly well known and respected, in Culpeper County. One of them died > in New Jersey, fighting in the Revolutionary War. And one of them lived in > Fauquier County. At one time I thought the second and third might be the > same person, but James Jett continued to show up in county records after the > War. > > We have only one record, suggesting a parent for a James Jett living in > 1760. That would be the James Jett, son of Peter Jett who died in 1758. But > we can’t use this record for all three James Jetts, just because we don’t > have two others. We need to figure out where all three of them > originated. Until that happens, we are just spinning our wheels, and discouraging > others from doing good research because they think they can rely on our > faulty conclusions. > > Incidentally, I have seen recent references to the SETTLE and MOTHERSHEAD > families, both of whom also appear in JETT records. Sometimes, making > connections between families is a good way to sort them all out. > > The population of Virginia in 1760 was about 340,000. That’s much less > than the population today of Wyoming. I doubt there were more than 40 or 50 > male Jetts living at any one time, during the 1700s. It’s just that they > kept moving to the frontier, where few written records were kept and even > fewer have been preserved. (It also doesn't help, that more than half of > them were named John, Francis, William, Peter or James.) But the small number > of subjects, and the small amount of reliable records, should make tracing > all of them easier, not more difficult. I am always grateful that I am > not a Smith descendant. > > Bob Kamman > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to VAFAUQUI-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message