This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: MichaelWright12 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/16645.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Trevor, Nice to meet you and welcome to this forum. In order to help we will need more information than just ancestor names in your lineage. I am assuming from your post that you are fairly new to genealogical research, and perhaps a youthful user of the Internet for the purposes of doing genealogical research at age 19. I must say that I am particularly encouraged that a young man of your age is interested enough in his ancestry to start asking questions now when there are likely to be family members alive who may be the only ones that know some crucial details. I wish I had taken up an interest in genealogy work at your age. It would have saved me years of research to have had the presence of mind to ask my relatives for information before they all died. So, assuming you are new to this work, I have a few bits of information I can pass on, and a few suggestions you need to consider. The first thing you should know about the Wright surname is that by 1600 it was the 13th most common surname in England. That means there are literally millions of Wrights running around today and most of them are not related to each other. The second thing you need to be aware of is that Y-DNA genetic genealogical testing in recent years has shown that there are over 100 entirely unrelated Wright male line family groups in the USA alone. The third thing you need to know is that asking for help from the on-line genealogical research community requires that you first provide more details other than just names of ancestors if you want to get any useful responses. Therefore, I suggest that when asking for help with a family research project it is best to provide some birth, marriage and/or death dates along with location information for these critical dates. These details along with the names of your known ancestors and names of their spouses are all needed for most of us to orient ourselves to determine if we are personally in a position to help you. It may surprise you to know that the names you have provided are common enough that, without a state or county of residence and a vital date for reference, no one is likely to be able to determine that they can help. Most of us are rooted in our research and our deeper genealogical knowledge only within a select region(s) of the country where our personal ancestors spent their time. For instance, I am very familiar with New England Wright families of MA and CT from the earliest times whose descendants later migrated to NH, VT, NY, OH, Canada and then even later to all points West. If you were to tell me your Wrights were of New England stock or born in one of those states, I might perk up and see if I could help. But if you tell me your Wrights are from Kentucky or Georgia, I would not give your request a second's thought, because I know next to nothing about the many Wrights who settled at an early time in VA/WV, NJ, PA, MD, NC, SC and Georgia and later moved to KY & TN ! and then on to IN or IL or IA. If the home region of your ancestors is not given in your request for help, the names alone are not enough to get much help out of the rest of us. I also wanted to leave you with the caution that you are asking people to spend some of their time digging through what they have on Wright genealogy (which might represent years of work) in order to come up with something that may or may not be helpful to you. If you are going to ask for their time to do that, I would hope that you would not find it too much to ask that you put in the additional amount of your time that it will take to re-publish your request for help so that it includes as much detailed information as you can gather by yourself on your ancestor's lives. Those of us who have been doing genealogical research for the last 20 or 30 years respond much more eagerly to people who appear to have done some of their own basic homework rather than those who appear to want the fruits of our collective hard work without putting any effort of their own into their family research. I trust that is not your intentions, but in cyperworld, the appearances of your written word is the only reality, and brevity in the genealogical arena is an enemy to your credibility as a serious student of your ancestry. Any brevity you are used to using in texting or e-mailing your friends does not work well in these forums. On the other hand, if all you presently have is what you have given in the previous post, then might I suggest you first canvass family members with questions about birth, marriage and death dates and locations as well as names of spouses. Your relatives are your first resource and should be tapped first. The next resource you can research on your own is the Census and State vital statistics records for the state of your ancestor's residence(s). Those records are right here on Ancestry.com. That work should give you some, if not all, of the details I was suggesting you post in your request for help and/or connections from the on-line research community. The last thought I wanted to leave you with is also a caution to do your own research and personally check original resources and records whenever possible. That is to say, do not take anything at face value that you find on the Internet, including the research of those other people who respond to your requests for help with possible connections. Be cautious in using published material from those older published genealogical works that have been made available on the Internet for free download. If the original source record for data are not given, be cautious in using and repeating the information until you have personally checked original records. In personal contacts, ask for source information whenever it is not given, and check them out so that you can begin to figure out what Internet sources you can trust to have checked their facts and which ones have simply cut and pasted unverified genealogies and offer them up as their own research. There are also databases th! at are used as genealogical sources that were never intended for that purpose and are full of errors of ever sort, such as the Later Day Saints (LDS) Library in Utah. This library of world records was put together for religious purposes, and while it is a great place to start one's research, everything in it should be checked because the family connections are not rigorously verified anywhere within their database. There is a lot of other bad information posted on line that does not pass even the most cursory of examination of the original records. Be very careful what you incorporate into your own records. Trust only those who are willing and can show you where they got their data and those things that you have personally verified. Be skeptical of everything else and don't allow yourself to get too vested in facts and connections that have not, or cannot be verified. Doing a genealogy correctly is hard work, detailed work, I would even venture to say, tedious work. It is also addictive work for those who really take to it. It can easily burn you out if you let it. So, be careful of that, too. Take a break from it now and then and never let it interfer with those efforts in your life that must be done well to keep career, house and home happy and prosperous. Remember, unless you intend to become a professional genealogist, charging for your time and publishing articles and books for profit, it is just a hobby which costs you money and time, just like any other hobby. I wish you well in your quest to learn more about your Wright ancestry, and I hope you can find those connections you are seeking. I also apologize if this response is a bit pedantic. I am a teacher and trainer by professional necessity, not by any particular talent for it. I just do the best I can when I see a possible need, and hope my "students" can rise above my deficiencies as a teacher and take away the message(s) without ill will toward the messenger. I wish you a long and satisfying interest in your family history. It isn't the most glamorous hobby, but there are many worse things you could spend your time doing and none of those would motivate you to learn the things you will suddenly find you want to learn to better understand who these people really were that you came from. Their life stories will amaze you before you are done and you will know American and British history better than you ever thought possible if you can find a way to follow your ancestry back to their origins in England. With best regards, Mike Wright Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.