Genea Wishes for 2019

I read a post today from Down Home Genealogy (you can find it here) where Devry gave a recap of things that she had ‘wished and hoped’ for in 2018. Reading her post, it got me to thinking about how often I, and possibly you do it, too, simply forget to look at all the great strides I’ve made in my research and instead tend to focus on what’s missing – the brick walls I can’t seem to get past, or the missing document that I can’t find that would prove my theories. Her post inspired me to do something similar.

Here I am going to make myself a list of the problems that I am working on right now. The things that I hope to be able to solve soon, and the questions that have arisen recently that require answers. Then, next January, I’ll revisit this list and see if I have been able to complete any, if not all, of my items. I hope that it will give me a way to look back on the year and take pride in the things I could accomplish; if I am unable to solve the questions, then at least I will have made some strides and can reevaluate my methods.

So, without further ado, here are the research questions that I hope to solve in 2019:

1. Determine the whereabouts of Garrison Bush’s family in 1870. Garrison and his family are in Wayne County, Tennessee, in 1850 and 1860. He owns a 125 acre farm that produced Indian Corn and wheat. But 1870, however, I am unable to locate him, his wife and three of their five children. Their youngest son, who is 6, and their second oldest, who is about 21, are living with people are I can’t identify as family, and in two different districts of Wayne County. What happened to Garrison and his wife, Emily? Did they die? Did she die and he went off to war? Were they migrating (their other children show up in Pemiscot County, Missouri, with their own families in later censuses). If they were migrating, why leave their kids behind?
2. Who the heck is “Aunt Dicie”? I think I’ve mentioned Aunt Dicie before, but it still bothers me that I can’t place her within my family. My great grandmother, who I called Granny, and her sisters all called her Aunt. I have a picture of Granny, me and Aunt Dicie outside of church on Easter when I was about two years old, but I don’t really remember here at all. When my mom died, I inherited the few pictures and newspaper clippings that she had collected over the years and there were a couple of newspaper articles about Dicie Johnston and her 98th and 100th birthday celebrations. I can tell it’s the same woman from the picture of Granny and me, but it still doesn’t explain her connection. I have a theory that she is actually Dorcas Conner, who shows up on the 1900 Census living with my Granny’s family. She is listed as “sister-in-law” to David Evans, Granny’s father. I believe that Dorcas Conner may be David Evan’s step-sister (sister-in-law was used to describe that relationship back then), from his mother’s side. But I have still not been able to find any document that cements that theory.
3. What happened to Sidney Madgling’s husbands? I think my husband may have a legendary “black widow” in his line! Not really, but, his great-great grandmother out lived 3 husbands. During her unmarried years she was enumerated living with one of her son’s; Sidney Green Wall. She married his father, James Wall, first, in Searcy County, Arkansas, but then James mysteriously disappears from the census between 1884 and 1900. She marries again, this time to a man that I believe was a preacher. She’s married to him a few years and he kicks the bucket. Then, her third husband – well, I don’t even think they were married a full five years before he died. I don’t know exactly when Sidney passed away,  but she was pretty elderly when she did. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of my research on her line last year in a ridiculous mistake of mine, but I am going to rebuild what I have and hopefully figure out what killed her husbands. I don’t know if I’d be relieved to find out she didn’t off them herself, or excited to find some skeletons!
4. Finally, my last wish is to connected my 4x great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Trim, to his parents. There are a LOT of family trees out there that have him linked to a man named Elijah Martin Trim, but I have yet to find any documentation. Every tree that I’ve looked at on Ancestry just shows “other ancestry trees” as the source of the connection, and for me, that just isn’t good enough. It may be that I’m just making it difficult on myself, but I want proof.

Alrighty, I know that isn’t a great big list of goals and wishes, but these are items that have been brick walls for me for a while now. I am, obviously, going to be doing other research as well (I have my first client project!), but these are my genealogy opus, if you will.

Thanks for hanging in here with me, and if you have any comments or suggestions of any sources I should try, I would definitely love the input!