This blog post is entirely my opinion, and I mean no disrespect to southerners. I love the south, and the people who make it a great place. I have spent all my adult life here in the south, but  I come from a long line of yankees, and all of my research until recently has been in the north (mostly Ohio). Records have been plentiful, and easy to access, and I didn't realize how fortunate I was!  I am now working on my husband's and my daughter-in-law's southern genealogies, and it is a totally different story! Here is a list of suggestions I would have loved to give people in the past to make research easier. The names I use are made up (or mostly so), but I am sure all of you who have southern roots can understand where I am coming from

1. When you name your child, a first, middle and last name is sufficient. It is hard enough to trace a Mary Smith, but it is even harder when you name your beautiful little rosy cheeked darlin'  Mary Ann Nancy Elizabeth Smith, and then can't decide whether to call her Maryann, Mary, Annie, Nanny, Polly, Betsy, Eliza, Nancy, Bitty, or many of the other names she used over the years. You will have more babies, so save of the names for future sugars and don't pile all the names on one little bouncing baby! On the same note, When you have five names and you grow up, please try to use the same name all the time.
2. It is okay to use a nickname, but on important documents, please use the name you were given at birth. I know you have been called Bubba or Junior since you were knee high to a grasshopper, but looking for one specific Bubba or Junior in a sea of Bubbas and Juniors is enough to make a person want to scream! If Bubba or Junior is the name you were given at birth, then add a middle initial to make you stand out from the crowd.
3. The census takers are your friends. They are not out to hurt you (and they aren't revenuers looking for that still you have hidden in the back forty). It's okay to let them count you. You don't have to hide. Years from now when your ancestors are trying to find you on the census it will drive them nuts when you just disappear off the face of the earth for 10 or 20 years. How are they supposed to know that you never left that same piece of farmland that has been in your family for a hundred years?
4. Even if you can't read or write, please, please, PLEASE!!! learn how old you and your children are! I understand that if you have been out working in the fields all day you may be tired and forgetful, but giving the census taker the first number that comes to mind for your age just isn't cutting it! Finding that your birth date is somewhere between 1790 and 1820 is just too wide a margin to track anyone down. At least try to get it within a five year radius!
5. Census takers, this one is for you. Please learn how to write neatly! Nice handwriting is an art form, please learn it.  People all over the US will later thank you for it! I know you spell things like they sound, and southern people have a proud heritage of naming their children names that no one has ever heard of before, but at least TRY to be somewhere in the ballpark! How you got Twillman from Swithin, I will never know! Or maybe that was just your poor handwriting again. I don't know, but work on both spelling and handwriting and you will make many, many people very happy in the future.
6. Lastly, please try to remember where you were born. I know that state boundaries changed, but at least try to give a state in the general area. If one census says you were born in Texas and another says Georgia, I get totally confused.

I am sure there is more advice I could give to those past ancestors, but since I have just begun southern research these few things are the ones that I have had to deal with the most. I know you will find instances of these in other areas of the country also, but the good old south seems to be consistent.

Happy Southern hunting!

  ancestralspace.com/heskettpowers

I was organizing my family pictures and realized that I have photos of 9 generations, beginning with my new grandsugar, Tegan, born 10 Apr 2009 and ending with my 4 ggrandfather Norval Valentine Heskett born 15 Feb 1805. It was so awesome to realize I could put faces to over 200 years of my family!

I have been sitting here staring at a blank page forever trying to decide what would be the best topic for my first blog post. I could write all kinds of mundane things about myself, but I really hate talking about myself, and find myself rather boring, so I thought that I would write about the brickwall that I have been beating my head against for years now. The only thing the head beating has accomplished is a headache.

Norval Valentine Heskett/Hiskett is my 4ggrandfather. The only information I have about his early years is from a family history written by my ggrandfather in 1947, and of course he didn't cite his sources, so I have no clue how accurate the facts are.  The facts from ggrandpa state that Norval was born 15 Feb 1805 in Loudoun county, VA, to Benjamin Adam Heskett. There is no mention of his mother. Norval's gravestone located in Mt Gilead, Morrow county, OH, supports the birthdate. Norval was supposedly raised by his grandparents in VA, although wether it was his maternal or paternal grandparents was not stated.

That was all the information I started out with. Who was Norval's mother? Why wasn't he raised by his parents?I had questions and I wanted answers. I was fairly new to genealogy research when I started searching for Norval, and I thought I could find all of the answers on the internet. Oh how very wrong I was! I went to rootsweb, typed in ggrandpa's name and was thrilled when I saw all of the information on him! There were several trees, all with his parents names and his children's names and facts galore and I was so excited! Here was my whole family tree. This was going to save me so much time! I got out my trusty pencil, blank pedigreer charts and family group sheets and started copying all the information I could find. I searched message boards and mailing lists. This whole genealogy research was a piece of cake! I could find almost everything I needed on the internet.......

Then the brakes came on. Wait, this can't be right! All of the family trees and message board messages said that Nancy Nevin was the mother of Norval. Nancy was born in 1792, only 13 years before Norval's birth. Benjamin Adam and Nancy were married 23 Jan 1812 in Ross county, OH, 7 years after Norval's birth. OMG you can't believe everything you find on the internet! This was that turning point in my genealogy research. Out came my trusty pencil and I started writing letters. I wrote to Ross county and got a copy of Benjamin Adam and Nancy's marriage record. I wrote Loudoun county and got a copy of Norval's paternal grandfather's will, I wrote to Belmont county, OH and got a copy of Benjamin Adam's will. Although I had my fingers crossed, there was no mention of Norval in either will, although Benjamin Adam's children by Nancy were all mentioned.I wrote to see if there was a previous marriage record in Loudoun county for Benjamin , with no luck. I wrote letter after letter, each one with a negative response.

On 12 Feb 1829 Norval married Massey Nickols in Marion county, OH. They had 7 children and then on 19 April 1844 Massey died. Norval then went to Loudoun county VA in 1846 and married Emily Howell. They returned to Marion county where they had 4 children, only 2 survivng infancy. Norval died 8 Feb 1852 in Mt Gilead, Morrow county, OH.

The more I research, the more questions I have. Who is his mother? Can I even be sure that Benjamin Adam was his father? Where was Norval from birth until 1829 when he married? I search the records, bang my head against the brickwall , and still have no answers, only questions. And over and over I ask, WHERE'S NORVAL???

Someone please pass me the Tylenol.