If anyone had told me before 2025 that I would be attending the House of Ogburn Family Reunion in Richmond, Virginia, this weekend, I probably would’ve looked at them strangely. I had never even heard of the Ogburn family! But in 2025, more genealogy research and DNA research finally helped me break through a 30-year …
Category: Enslaved Ancestral Research
X-DNA Matters: Following the Trail from Mississippi Through South Carolina to Virginia
X-chromosome DNA, commonly called X-DNA, is an important component of genetic genealogy, yet it seems to receive considerably less attention today than it once did. I suspect that part of the reason is simply accessibility. Many DNA testers do not have easy access to information about their X-DNA matches. Nevertheless, X-DNA should not be ignored …
Was Albert and Alfred the Same Person?
One of the many challenges of genealogy is dealing with names. Variations in spelling are common, but researchers must also account for nicknames, middle names, aliases, and even individuals who appear in records under two entirely different given names. This case presented exactly that possibility. As I traced the history of a likely relative named …
Artificial Intelligence and Enslaved Ancestral Research
When I recently made the breakthrough discovery involving the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Flora Davis, in which I wrote here, it prompted me to revisit the research I had conducted years earlier on her husband, my 3rd-great-grandfather, Jack Davis Sr. of Panola County, Mississippi. I originally documented that investigation in a blog post published on …
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Hitting Pay Dirt: Mama Flora’s Family
Last week, I made a remarkable discovery. Quite unexpectedly, I learned that after the Civil War, my great-great-grandfather Hector Davis's brother, George Burnett, returned to South Carolina to reunite with his wife and children, leaving his parents, Jack and Flora Davis, and his siblings behind in northern Mississippi. Until then, I had no idea what …
Uncle George Went Back to South Carolina
Wednesday evening began like so many others. I logged into my DNA accounts to see whether any new matches had appeared. One match immediately caught my attention. "KM" shared 44 cM across three segments with my mother, 37 cM with me, and 28 cM with my mother’s brother. AncestryDNA correctly identified her as a maternal …
A Sheriff’s Sale Record Solves a Genetic Genealogy Mystery
This morning, after breakfast and a good cup of coffee, I felt an urge to do some genealogy research. More specifically, I felt drawn to revisit my Danner family line. The feeling seemed to come out of nowhere, and as many genealogists can relate, it made me wonder if perhaps the ancestors were giving me …
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Another Huge Discovery with FamilySearch’s Full Text Tool
When I began researching my family history in 1993, one of the first major discoveries I made was locating the death certificate of my mother’s maternal great-grandmother, Lucy Milam Davis of Panola County (Como), Mississippi, at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Lucy died on November 17, 1927, at approximately 80 years of age. …
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Uncle Nicholas Johnson was in my Backyard
My father’s great-grandmother, Jane Parrott Ealy of Leake County, Mississippi, was born around 1829 in Lunenburg County, Virginia. Her enslaver, Rev. William Parrott, transported Jane, along with her parents and siblings, to Mississippi shortly before 1840. While researching the court records of William Parrott and those of his wife’s family—Elizabeth Johnson Parrott—I discovered that Jane’s …
The Power of DNA: From Speculation toward Confirmation
I have never stopped researching the roots of my mother’s paternal grandfather, William “Bill” Reed of Tate County, Mississippi, known in the family as “Grandpa Bill.” Born around 1846 in Abbeville County, South Carolina, he, his sister Mary, and others joined a wagon train bound for Panola County, Mississippi around 1866. According to family oral …
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Roots Revealed 