How to Use Family Migration Patterns to Track Your Ancestors

Beginning with the first colonists, every generation of Americans up until the first decades of the twentieth century had the opportunity to become pioneers by settling in newly-opened areas of the country. Many people took advantage of this opportunity to move on from the place where their parents or grandparents had settled. Often a few members of an extended family would push further west, sending word to those left behind that though the new country was rough, it was better than where they had been living. Eventually others within their family would decide to go to this new "promised land", putting down roots near those who were already there. Other times an entire extended family would decide to move to a frontier area together, going as a group to set up new farms or towns. This tendency for members of the same family to settle near one another as they moved to new places can become a useful tool in overcoming roadblocks in your genealogy research.

When you say "family" to the average American, their first thought is their immediate family -- father, mother, brothers, sisters, spouse, and children. When you mention "relatives" or "extended family", the mind is taken to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. While "families" often move about and do things more as a unit, "relatives" do not always function in this way in our modern society. This was not necessarily true in the past, however. Historically, extended families were often of a group mentality, which is why they tended to settle in places where people related to them already lived. This is also why entire wagon trains of pioneers could be made up of people who were related to each other in one way or another, even if only by marriage. As you research your ancestors, think of them as they many times thought of themselves -- as an interdependent group.

The best way to illustrate how group migration can help your research is by an example. Let us say that you have a George Abel Rawlings in your family, and you simply cannot determine who his parents were since he was married and out of the house by 1850. There seem to be no records that tie him directly to any other Rawlings family living near him in the earliest census in which he appears. He was born in 1826 and his birth state was Ohio. He was married around 1848. He moved a couple of times in his adult life, first going from Ohio to Tennessee in the 1850's, then from Tennessee to Nebraska in the late 1860's. He died in Nebraska in 1902. (Knowing this sort of information can actually give you a good start -- I would lay out all such details in front of you before starting a relative hunt.) The first thing to do would be to look at all of the Rawlings families listed in the area where he lived in Ohio in 1850. You would write down or save in a file on your computer the names of the people in each family, their ages, and where they were born. After completing that step, you would then go to the area in Tennessee where George lived in 1860 and see if any of those same people show up there. You would also do the same with the federal census records for 1870, 1880, and 1900 for the area in which he lived in Nebraska. Now, say while you are doing all of this an Edgar M. Rawlings shows up twice in the same county with George, first in Ohio and later in Nebraska. Edgar is three years older than George, was born in Ohio, and has a son who happens to be named George P. Rawlings. Both men say in the 1880 and1900 censuses that their father was born in Pennsylvania and their mother was born in Ohio. Another point of interest is the fact both men have a daughter named Melinda K. Rawlings. A check back at Ohio records show that in 1850 there was a seventeen-year-old Melinda K. Rawlings living with a Micah and Elizabeth Rawlings in Ohio. This Melinda K. married a man named Thomas Pike in 1853. A search for Thomas and Melinda Pike in 1880 shows this same couple to be living in Nebraska, just over the county line from our George Rawlings. She has both a George and an Edgar amongst her children. At this stage the evidence points very strongly to Micah and Elizabeth being the parents of George and Edgar as well. A little digging and a query posted online (use message boards -- there are often people out there who hold the answer to your questions because they have access to records that are not yet online!) yields an answer from a descendant of Melinda Rawlings Pike, who knows for a fact that Melinda had brothers named George and Edgar who were born in 1826 and 1823, respectively. You now have your match, via a woman you may not have otherwise guessed to be your George's sister.

I know the above example may seem overly simple, but sometimes the answer is that obvious. There may be times, conversely, in which you may have fewer starting details or run into other issues that make searching this way rather difficult. I would still persist in using this method of searching, however, even if it does not seem to yield any answers at first. There are many angles that would not otherwise be considered by approaching an ancestral wall this way. I will grant, though, that this method is harder to use when one is searching for someone with a very common surname. Shared first names in a family are especially important in such a case, so be happy if your great-great-grandfather had a slightly odd name -- it can help. 

At times the relatives you find living near your ancestor may be a cousin, uncle, niece, or some other person with similar roots. Being able to discern who is immediate family and who is extended family is very important before attempting to come to any conclusions. Also, some people who appear to be related are not related at all, though they may have been friends of your ancestor (friends followed one another when moving as well). Three critical questions that must be asked with every potential match are:

1. Do the facts concerning where your ancestor and the potential siblings were born, and where their parents were born, line up in a reasonable way? A person born in a different state the same year as your ancestor is not going to be from their immediate family. Watch out for errors in the census concerning birth states, however, before throwing out a match. A person who says their mother was born in Vermont in two censuses and New York on one may leave us with the conclusion that "New York" was recorded in error. Also, other details must match as well. Most parents would not have named two of their children with the same name (in other words, if you ancestor's first name is Benjamin, and a set of potential parents have a son named Benjamin in their household that is four years younger than your ancestor, then consider this to not be a match).
2. Are there historical documents that exist that clearly indicate a person of interest is not related to your ancestor? Primary sources like wills can quickly give you an answer as to whether a person was a son or daughter of a potential parent in most cases. There are exceptions with such documents, however, such as your ancestor dying before the potential parent died. Do not throw out such cases unless you have other evidence that points you in a different direction.
3. Are you not considering someone because on the surface they do not seem like a good match? Sometimes a little digging past the surface can yield interesting results. In the past, a man might marry a younger woman after the death of his first wife and have a second set of children who were much younger than the children of the first wife. If your ancestor was from such a family, you might overlook this ancestor's father simply because his wife and children seem too young to make him the right match.

One final note I would make here is to think outside the box when you look at people with the same surname living near your ancestor. Just because you stumble upon someone else's research which says so-and-so did not have a child by that name doesn't mean they could not have missed something. Do not throw a possibility out until you have proven absolutely that they are not directly related to your ancestor. On the other hand, do not necessarily accept without question information from another's research if they have absolutely no proof of what they are claiming. Search through historical records yourself to see whether the person is correct in their speculation or not.

While this method of research may be more time-consuming than other methods, it can yield results when other means fail if you are willing to make the effort to look. I have searched for clues this way myself, and over time I have been rewarded with information I may not have found otherwise.