Archive for November 2014
A Yankee perspective on Colonial times…
I figure you had to work your butts off…. or starve… North or South…
To any Pitt folks…
My “hits” have been heavy lately for my Pitt research… much of my stuff has been online for awhile… there is a usual “lag” before someone stumbles upon my ramblings and shares it with a friend or two.
Scroll down the right side of this site and find the “search” window… enter “pitt”… then all hell will break loose with various posts.
I have no Pitts in my family history… I just post stuff to start fights. My interest is with my ancestors who may have ran across them. Basically I have an old internet friend who DOES have Pitt ancestors and much of my interest was sparked by her. (Joani in Hawaii).
All of my stuff is posted so it is open to a free for all for you Pitt folks to nit-pick the notes. I KNOW how you genealogy types are… and don’t try to deny it.
I am in the same pickle you folks are… once the kids left Virginia then the miscreants forgot to leave us any trails to find them. The nerve of some people!
My “new” approach to an “old” idea…
I think every genealogist wants a map to simply gather his thoughts… to see the neighbors… to ground the person being studied. I am a “mapper”… it’s what I do, and I’m pretty damn good at it if I may be so bold. My maps of Isle of Wight and Surry County are open to any criticism… unfortunately I am a small fish in a large pond and my obscure little blog does not attract any “serious” historians to comment.
My methodology is simple: take actual historic deeds from the Library of Virginia and plot the damn things. Like a jigsaw puzzle, either they fit or they do not.
But back to the point of this post…
Once a researcher can establish “with a fair amount of certitude” where his subject was (on a map) then he can build a case that simply will not show up merely by studying the normal avenues. I offer this post as an example:
Bear in mind that “No will exists for the man that I discuss…but it is obvious from the facts of the map!”
Nansemond County, VA is a severely burned county… the records are gone due to nefarious deeds of the Civil War. What I propose is simply that the trail is not lost. The maps that I construct re-create WHAT WAS but is now lost… it’s that simple. You cannot see it without the map. The records are real… the picture is lost.
I hope that in the future my meager attempts will prompt a more concerted effort to improve my methods… a grant to a college, whatever… a group effort is needed. Why? because all roads lead to Virginia in the history of the South.
I know, I know… this is a genealogy blog…
But I am a hopeless history nerd… so there. There doesn’t appear to be any “King Tut” like treasure but it is still ongoing…
http://www.theamphipolistomb.com/
still digging…
http://www.hellasforce.com/en/eight-square-meter-vault-marble-door-found-amphipolis-tomb/
Bummer… it was looted long ago…
update