I wonder what happened?

I had a little extra time this week in between other tasks, so I decided to try some new searches on the recently upgraded FamilySearch website.  I found a few items that with scans of original documents that directly answered a few questions, but I also found one that had a bit of a surprise…

New cousins, but no way to contact them

I’m trying to find out a little more about my Brown line this week.  I’ve traced back to my second great grandfather James M. Brown (b. circa 1853, Bloomington, Indiana).  I can’t quite get much farther back yet except that the 1880 U.S. census says his parents were both born in South Carolina.  I found a potential lead on more information in the Ancestral File database on FamilySearch, but I have no way to contact the contributors.  Aaaarrrrgggghhh!

Today’s new document

Well, I was hoping I could have a good April Fool for this weekend, but with the crazy busy way things have gone since November, it didn’t quite work out this year.  Instead, I’ve got a new (to me) document to share that furthers my research a little and gives me several more questions to answer.

Surname Saturday: Campbell

So we reach another Saturday and that means another surname study.  We cycle back to my own ancestry again with a line where I only know my second great grandmother, Jane Neal Campbell.

Surname Saturday update: Brown (yes, already!)

So after putting today's Surname Saturday post together, I popped over to Beta FamilySearch and tried a couple quick queries.  The short story is that I found a couple of significant records that relate to this line, including this:

Surname Saturday: Brown

It's Saturday again, so it's time to review another of the surnames that I am researching.  Just like the Beach surname, since there are still living relatives in this line, we'll start this post with my great-grandfather Charles E. Brown.  Since I started my research, I learned that Brown is the fourth most common surname in the United States as of the 2000 U.S. census.  This may make scanning indexes a little more difficult, but I have a strategy.