research blog

My cousin Geneva passed away yesterday, Thursday, August 19, 2010 after a long battle with illness. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cheryl and Raynold as they make their arrangements. I think my most vivid memories shall always be of her smiling face as we gathered at the many family occasions over the years. At [...]

Just to give you an idea of the area of the state we were covering here is an image of the page in The Roads of Texas – 5th Edition map book I use to travel our state… So, now that we have visited Friendship and Bryant Station it’s time to try and find McCann [...]

This past week my wife expressed a desire to visit the cemeteries where ancestors are resting up around Milam County in central Texas. Since the weekend was one of the few our daughter was off (thus no need for babysitter Paw-paw), I suggested we enjoy the the last of the wildflowers and a beautiful late [...]

Sad news for the Genealogy researcher in Houston… 05 April 2010 To Members of the Genealogical Community: On Thursday, April 1st, 2010, Dr. Rhea Lawson, Director, Houston Public Library, presented a report to the City Council concerning a required reduction of operating hours in all Houston libraries including special collections due to drastic budget cuts [...]

Over the years it has always amazed me how deeply folks buy into their own data. Even me. As we do our research we become convinced of our conclusions…Sometimes even as new information becomes available. My take has always been that genealogy is always at best an inexact science…If you can even consider it a [...]

I have heard from cousins on a couple of my lines recently. Over the past month I have heard from relatives of my mothers grandmother, Della Blair Medford. This Blair line had been mostly unknown until I heard from two different cousins with their own lines. One is sharing photos which I will be posting [...]

Picasa is one of the most popular online photo publishing services available. However, it has always been a place to publish your photos for others to see. Now Google (the owners of Picasa) have introduced Collaborative Picasa Web Albums. Every album on Picasa Web Albums is potentially collaborative: multiple people can add pictures to the [...]

The whole reason I set this site up in the new format last fall was because it would be easier to update…Since then life happened and I just realized I haven’t. Updated the data that is. So today I did…Update that is. Now, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything is up to date…No, that would be [...]

View all Get your own

It was family reunion time last weekend. One “gift” I wasn’t expecting was a box of Aunt Bessie’s research and correspondence  from the 60′s thru the 80′s. I’ve been spending this week going through it and a lot of what she had was not commonly known to the rest of the family. There were a [...]

In the last two and a half months alone, the original Genealogy Research Process Map post received 500 pageviews. Version 2 of the map has only a few changes. Besides fixing two typos, the arrows separating the 6 process steps where moved up next to the step headers. I did this to help it look [...]

From Coffee Muses A fifty year old Christmas Card greeting being sent from my family one more time just as it was in 1958. Merry Christmas all… I’ll be doing the family bit for the next couple of days. Y’all enjoy the holiday and I’ll catch ya on the other side…

How do you define ‘home?’ Cal Lehmer’s house Where do you call home? Is it your present residence? Or is it someplace you’ve lived in the past? If you’re a “home is where the heart is” type of person, you probably have several places that you could rightfully call home. Any place that brings to [...]

Over the many years I have been researching, there have been several times where I’ve been advised against researching in valuable collections. A librarian, historian, or archivist might tell you that a certain set of files, index cards, or an electronic database or image doesn’t have anything to do with genealogy. Some have even said [...]

Family history isn’t limited to blood relatives or those who have entered our family tree through marriage, adoption or non-traditional means. Our families are broader than that. They extend to those we touch, or those who touch us, often in ways not so easily recognized by those just beyond our inner circles. This realization struck [...]

The aftermath of Hurricain Ike has left me with little time for continuing the update process of my genealogy…As the year winds down and the cleanup becomes less of an issue I hope to continue with what was a work in progress once more. My friends researching Cox-West-Whitt-Pearson and related families have been busy though. [...]

I have been reading Dick Eastman’s Newsletter for as long as I’ve been researching my family. This is the best time in history to be conducting genealogical research. Genealogy has accelerated at breakneck speed since we began using computers in the 1980s or before. The introduction of the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) genealogy database software [...]

If you don’t receive this newsletter you should sign up…Follow the link to read the whole article (and the rest of this issue) What is a fact? Google the definition of “fact” and you’ll get a variety of answers. Most definitions hinge on the concept of truth; so, a common definition would be that a [...]

Happy Papaw with newest addition to the family tree… Cameron Jay September 5, 2008 And with beaming Grandma And shortly it’ll be back to the hospital.

I recieved an email from a research buddy with some info on our common ancestry line which has had me running all over Ancestry chasing down one link after another. The interweaving of the lines has my head spinning. West…Bishop…Cox…Whitt…Pearson…Brown. I keep running into the same surnames in the same small area of Texas. I [...]

When I started updating these pages and posting documentation and images on my site, I didn’t imagine the time frame involved. After spending all of my free time over a four day weekend doing a data dump (when I wasn’t getting caught following intriguing leads into research wonderland), I am beginning to realize just how [...]

Image by SmileMyDay.com via Flickr Having a son that does php programing for a living makes life easy for a php illiterate like me. Jeremy was at the house when I got home from work on Thursday and he helped me tweak the code on the TNG Genealogy template I was using to integrate it’s [...]

I am learning a lot about the new system. I managed to post a history of the JP Boyd family yesterday. It is just a narative book report edited to read morelike it was written by a person, but I am quite proud of the result. Look for more in the coming weeks, along with [...]

I’ve spent the weekend uploading, tweaking, adding photos, linking photo’s and generally learning to use the new software. The more I use it, the happier I am with The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding. After working with WordPress, I find the number of php files needed a bit intemidating. I am sure I’ll figure it [...]

My research hasn’t had as great a pull on me as it did a few years ago. I have been updating info and adding additional records to existing people in my database but haven’t had any great breakthroughs in any of the ancestral lines I am researching. So goes the life of a genealogical research [...]

I went through some old directories and uploaded the pictures I had from a few of the past Boyd-Cox Reunions. The link to the slideshows can be found on the Sidebar (once I get around to updating the links, sorry). Go check it out…

Logan Christopher Boyd October 19, 2006 It’s official I’m over the hill. Just call me Grandpa…

I started trying to update the genealogy on this site yesterday. I managed to get the new pages up only to find out I need to tweak the code embeded in every page. Since it took almost 4 hours last evening to delete and upload the new pages, I’ll try to redo it tonight…

Trying to keep the genealogy data updated on this site is not a easy task. Really it mainly involves about four hours to upload a full set of pages. And this is with a semi-fast connection…Oh well, I will try to be more timely in the updating. One major change in this update…I have been [...]

…I just haven’t been writing about it here, I’ll try to be better. Last summer a group of researchers with a common (or not common) connection back to different ancestors in my Cox/Pearson line got together in Austin to exchange info and ideas. Since then we have been exchanging emails and additional info. One of [...]

From Gary OK, to get this started I’ll post this… This last week I’ve been chasing Melinda Cox Eaton and her family. I found a transcription on the Shackelord County GenWeb site of burials in Moran Cemetery in Moran, Tx. the following Eatons were listed: Eaton, Danny 1908 1910 B-11 Eaton, Ermon D 1892 1958 [...]

…Where has the year gone. If anyone is checking this site…Have Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I have been spending my free time lately concentrating on my Boyd line again. I have been spending a lot of time familiarizing myself with the Boyd Families in the online records available for both North and [...]

It has been a long (and here in Texas, a HOT) fall. Yesterday brought an end to the unseasonable weather and the election season. Maybe this will allow a return to sanity on my part along with a return to the hunt for lost ancestors…I look forward to the hunt.

It has been an extremely busy time for me at work the past couple of weeks. Long hours and full weeks, and it looks like it will continue for a couple of more weeks yet. Therefore… there will be no updates on anything for a few weeks. I did spot a reference to this site [...]

I have had a lot of fun and found some new info in my chasing around for the first half of the year. I am adding some new photo’s on my photography page from this years travels in Indiana and North Carolina. I am also updating the Genealogy pages with what new information I have [...]

At the end of October 2003 I was informed by Yahoo/Geocities that I had one month to update some pages on my website or they would be deleing them in a housecleaning effort. About a week later I followed the link they supplied to start the update process only to find my website didn’t exist [...]

Thanksgiving is over and the update to these pages is about concluded. I probably have a few links to fix and some additions to make. I want to link the reports to the family pages as they were in the old web. On a family note Thanksgiving at my Mom’s this year was less stressful [...]

It seems to be the nature of the internet. Always beginning. Always evolving. This is the first major evolution of this site. Whether it is any better than the last, you will have to be the judge. The main thing that has changed is my database has been updated to remove some of the non-relatives that [...]

It’s been another year and the 41′st Annual Boyd ~ Cox Reunion was held in Wallis, Texas this year. As always I enjoyed meeting with the family and the visit was rushed as always. The core group doesn’t change much each year. It would be nice if we could encourage a greater participation. If we [...]

Made a trip to North Carolina for work. I hade a chance to spend a couple of days up in the mountains. It was my first trip up into the Blue Ridge Mountains and I must admit I was impressed. While I don’t have any records to tie my line of Linville’s to the area, [...]

What with a fire that destroyed our offices at work and all of the rebuilding going on there, I haven’t had much of a chance to get a lot done on my research. I was able to spend a few days in central Texas doing a little research… I spent a few days running down [...]

Since I last worked on this site a number of things have happened…mainly work related, that have kept me from working on this site or tracing my roots. As I mentioned in my last opening…we did the Boyd-Cox Reunion in June. It was fun seeing all of the family that attended, I wish more of [...]

The past 2 months have been fruitful for my Pearson / Cox research. I finally was able to find a connection between the Benoni Pearson Family and Phillip Caleb Cox. It seems that both Benoni and Caleb were listed on the Tax Lists for Polk County Arkansas in 1845. From the evidence thus presented we [...]

OK…OK. I have been very busy and have not updated this page or anything else in six months. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been shaking that family tree as often as I could. If anyone is interested… The Boyd – Cox Annual Family Reunion happens this Sunday in East Bernard Texas. I will be attending [...]

And thus begins my sojourn on the world wide web. And, since I never start small, this site began life as about 2,500 pages. Granted most were automatically created byGedPage, (which I still need to register), the program I chose because it gave the most elegant output to my eye. I hope that the info [...]

This past week my wife expressed a desire to visit the cemeteries where ancestors are resting up around Milam County in central Texas. Since the weekend was one of the few our daughter was off (thus no need for babysitter Paw-paw), I suggested we enjoy the the last of the wildflowers and a beautiful late [...]

I have heard from cousins on a couple of my lines recently. Over the past month I have heard from relatives of my mothers grandmother, Della Blair Medford. This Blair line had been mostly unknown until I heard from two different cousins with their own lines. One is sharing photos which I will be posting [...]

It was family reunion time last weekend. One “gift” I wasn’t expecting was a box of Aunt Bessie’s research and correspondence  from the 60′s thru the 80′s. I’ve been spending this week going through it and a lot of what she had was not commonly known to the rest of the family. There were a [...]

The whole reason I set this site up in the new format last fall was because it would be easier to update…Since then life happened and I just realized I haven’t. Updated the data that is. So today I did…Update that is. Now, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything is up to date…No, that would be [...]

I have heard from cousins on a couple of my lines recently. Over the past month I have heard from relatives of my mothers grandmother, Della Blair Medford. This Blair line had been mostly unknown until I heard from two different cousins with their own lines. One is sharing photos which I will be posting [...]

My cousin Geneva passed away yesterday, Thursday, August 19, 2010 after a long battle with illness. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cheryl and Raynold as they make their arrangements. I think my most vivid memories shall always be of her smiling face as we gathered at the many family occasions over the years. At [...]

Over the years it has always amazed me how deeply folks buy into their own data. Even me. As we do our research we become convinced of our conclusions…Sometimes even as new information becomes available. My take has always been that genealogy is always at best an inexact science…If you can even consider it a [...]

If you don’t receive this newsletter you should sign up…Follow the link to read the whole article (and the rest of this issue) What is a fact? Google the definition of “fact” and you’ll get a variety of answers. Most definitions hinge on the concept of truth; so, a common definition would be that a [...]

I have been reading Dick Eastman’s Newsletter for as long as I’ve been researching my family. This is the best time in history to be conducting genealogical research. Genealogy has accelerated at breakneck speed since we began using computers in the 1980s or before. The introduction of the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) genealogy database software [...]

Family history isn’t limited to blood relatives or those who have entered our family tree through marriage, adoption or non-traditional means. Our families are broader than that. They extend to those we touch, or those who touch us, often in ways not so easily recognized by those just beyond our inner circles. This realization struck [...]

Over the many years I have been researching, there have been several times where I’ve been advised against researching in valuable collections. A librarian, historian, or archivist might tell you that a certain set of files, index cards, or an electronic database or image doesn’t have anything to do with genealogy. Some have even said [...]

How do you define ‘home?’ Cal Lehmer’s house Where do you call home? Is it your present residence? Or is it someplace you’ve lived in the past? If you’re a “home is where the heart is” type of person, you probably have several places that you could rightfully call home. Any place that brings to [...]

In the last two and a half months alone, the original Genealogy Research Process Map post received 500 pageviews. Version 2 of the map has only a few changes. Besides fixing two typos, the arrows separating the 6 process steps where moved up next to the step headers. I did this to help it look [...]

View all Get your own

The whole reason I set this site up in the new format last fall was because it would be easier to update…Since then life happened and I just realized I haven’t. Updated the data that is. So today I did…Update that is. Now, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything is up to date…No, that would be [...]

Picasa is one of the most popular online photo publishing services available. However, it has always been a place to publish your photos for others to see. Now Google (the owners of Picasa) have introduced Collaborative Picasa Web Albums. Every album on Picasa Web Albums is potentially collaborative: multiple people can add pictures to the [...]

Sad news for the Genealogy researcher in Houston… 05 April 2010 To Members of the Genealogical Community: On Thursday, April 1st, 2010, Dr. Rhea Lawson, Director, Houston Public Library, presented a report to the City Council concerning a required reduction of operating hours in all Houston libraries including special collections due to drastic budget cuts [...]

This past week my wife expressed a desire to visit the cemeteries where ancestors are resting up around Milam County in central Texas. Since the weekend was one of the few our daughter was off (thus no need for babysitter Paw-paw), I suggested we enjoy the the last of the wildflowers and a beautiful late [...]

Just to give you an idea of the area of the state we were covering here is an image of the page in The Roads of Texas – 5th Edition map book I use to travel our state… So, now that we have visited Friendship and Bryant Station it’s time to try and find McCann [...]

I am learning a lot about the new system. I managed to post a history of the JP Boyd family yesterday. It is just a narative book report edited to read morelike it was written by a person, but I am quite proud of the result. Look for more in the coming weeks, along with [...]

I recieved an email from a research buddy with some info on our common ancestry line which has had me running all over Ancestry chasing down one link after another. The interweaving of the lines has my head spinning. West…Bishop…Cox…Whitt…Pearson…Brown. I keep running into the same surnames in the same small area of Texas. I [...]

It was family reunion time last weekend. One “gift” I wasn’t expecting was a box of Aunt Bessie’s research and correspondence  from the 60′s thru the 80′s. I’ve been spending this week going through it and a lot of what she had was not commonly known to the rest of the family. There were a [...]

The whole reason I set this site up in the new format last fall was because it would be easier to update…Since then life happened and I just realized I haven’t. Updated the data that is. So today I did…Update that is. Now, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything is up to date…No, that would be [...]

Over the years it has always amazed me how deeply folks buy into their own data. Even me. As we do our research we become convinced of our conclusions…Sometimes even as new information becomes available. My take has always been that genealogy is always at best an inexact science…If you can even consider it a [...]

I have heard from cousins on a couple of my lines recently. Over the past month I have heard from relatives of my mothers grandmother, Della Blair Medford. This Blair line had been mostly unknown until I heard from two different cousins with their own lines. One is sharing photos which I will be posting [...]

And thus begins my sojourn on the world wide web. And, since I never start small, this site began life as about 2,500 pages. Granted most were automatically created byGedPage, (which I still need to register), the program I chose because it gave the most elegant output to my eye. I hope that the info [...]

OK…OK. I have been very busy and have not updated this page or anything else in six months. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been shaking that family tree as often as I could. If anyone is interested… The Boyd – Cox Annual Family Reunion happens this Sunday in East Bernard Texas. I will be attending [...]

The past 2 months have been fruitful for my Pearson / Cox research. I finally was able to find a connection between the Benoni Pearson Family and Phillip Caleb Cox. It seems that both Benoni and Caleb were listed on the Tax Lists for Polk County Arkansas in 1845. From the evidence thus presented we [...]

Since I last worked on this site a number of things have happened…mainly work related, that have kept me from working on this site or tracing my roots. As I mentioned in my last opening…we did the Boyd-Cox Reunion in June. It was fun seeing all of the family that attended, I wish more of [...]

What with a fire that destroyed our offices at work and all of the rebuilding going on there, I haven’t had much of a chance to get a lot done on my research. I was able to spend a few days in central Texas doing a little research… I spent a few days running down [...]

Made a trip to North Carolina for work. I hade a chance to spend a couple of days up in the mountains. It was my first trip up into the Blue Ridge Mountains and I must admit I was impressed. While I don’t have any records to tie my line of Linville’s to the area, [...]

It’s been another year and the 41′st Annual Boyd ~ Cox Reunion was held in Wallis, Texas this year. As always I enjoyed meeting with the family and the visit was rushed as always. The core group doesn’t change much each year. It would be nice if we could encourage a greater participation. If we [...]

It seems to be the nature of the internet. Always beginning. Always evolving. This is the first major evolution of this site. Whether it is any better than the last, you will have to be the judge. The main thing that has changed is my database has been updated to remove some of the non-relatives that [...]

Thanksgiving is over and the update to these pages is about concluded. I probably have a few links to fix and some additions to make. I want to link the reports to the family pages as they were in the old web. On a family note Thanksgiving at my Mom’s this year was less stressful [...]

At the end of October 2003 I was informed by Yahoo/Geocities that I had one month to update some pages on my website or they would be deleing them in a housecleaning effort. About a week later I followed the link they supplied to start the update process only to find my website didn’t exist [...]

I have had a lot of fun and found some new info in my chasing around for the first half of the year. I am adding some new photo’s on my photography page from this years travels in Indiana and North Carolina. I am also updating the Genealogy pages with what new information I have [...]

It has been an extremely busy time for me at work the past couple of weeks. Long hours and full weeks, and it looks like it will continue for a couple of more weeks yet. Therefore… there will be no updates on anything for a few weeks. I did spot a reference to this site [...]

It has been a long (and here in Texas, a HOT) fall. Yesterday brought an end to the unseasonable weather and the election season. Maybe this will allow a return to sanity on my part along with a return to the hunt for lost ancestors…I look forward to the hunt.

…Where has the year gone. If anyone is checking this site…Have Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I have been spending my free time lately concentrating on my Boyd line again. I have been spending a lot of time familiarizing myself with the Boyd Families in the online records available for both North and [...]

From Gary OK, to get this started I’ll post this… This last week I’ve been chasing Melinda Cox Eaton and her family. I found a transcription on the Shackelord County GenWeb site of burials in Moran Cemetery in Moran, Tx. the following Eatons were listed: Eaton, Danny 1908 1910 B-11 Eaton, Ermon D 1892 1958 [...]

…I just haven’t been writing about it here, I’ll try to be better. Last summer a group of researchers with a common (or not common) connection back to different ancestors in my Cox/Pearson line got together in Austin to exchange info and ideas. Since then we have been exchanging emails and additional info. One of [...]

Trying to keep the genealogy data updated on this site is not a easy task. Really it mainly involves about four hours to upload a full set of pages. And this is with a semi-fast connection…Oh well, I will try to be more timely in the updating. One major change in this update…I have been [...]

I started trying to update the genealogy on this site yesterday. I managed to get the new pages up only to find out I need to tweak the code embeded in every page. Since it took almost 4 hours last evening to delete and upload the new pages, I’ll try to redo it tonight…

Logan Christopher Boyd October 19, 2006 It’s official I’m over the hill. Just call me Grandpa…

I went through some old directories and uploaded the pictures I had from a few of the past Boyd-Cox Reunions. The link to the slideshows can be found on the Sidebar (once I get around to updating the links, sorry). Go check it out…

My research hasn’t had as great a pull on me as it did a few years ago. I have been updating info and adding additional records to existing people in my database but haven’t had any great breakthroughs in any of the ancestral lines I am researching. So goes the life of a genealogical research [...]

I’ve spent the weekend uploading, tweaking, adding photos, linking photo’s and generally learning to use the new software. The more I use it, the happier I am with The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding. After working with WordPress, I find the number of php files needed a bit intemidating. I am sure I’ll figure it [...]

Image by SmileMyDay.com via Flickr Having a son that does php programing for a living makes life easy for a php illiterate like me. Jeremy was at the house when I got home from work on Thursday and he helped me tweak the code on the TNG Genealogy template I was using to integrate it’s [...]

When I started updating these pages and posting documentation and images on my site, I didn’t imagine the time frame involved. After spending all of my free time over a four day weekend doing a data dump (when I wasn’t getting caught following intriguing leads into research wonderland), I am beginning to realize just how [...]

Happy Papaw with newest addition to the family tree… Cameron Jay September 5, 2008 And with beaming Grandma And shortly it’ll be back to the hospital.

The aftermath of Hurricain Ike has left me with little time for continuing the update process of my genealogy…As the year winds down and the cleanup becomes less of an issue I hope to continue with what was a work in progress once more. My friends researching Cox-West-Whitt-Pearson and related families have been busy though. [...]

From Coffee Muses A fifty year old Christmas Card greeting being sent from my family one more time just as it was in 1958. Merry Christmas all… I’ll be doing the family bit for the next couple of days. Y’all enjoy the holiday and I’ll catch ya on the other side…

It was family reunion time last weekend. One “gift” I wasn’t expecting was a box of Aunt Bessie’s research and correspondence  from the 60′s thru the 80′s. I’ve been spending this week going through it and a lot of what she had was not commonly known to the rest of the family. There were a [...]