The 1900 census lists two children — 11-year-old Lillie and her 10-year-old brother — living with the Eubanks family in Louisville.
The problem is, said Columbus native Carol Anne Beard, Lillie’s great-granddaughter, that Eubanks isn’t the last the name the children were born with.
The siblings are listed as servants, rather than children, of the Eubanks’, but both took the Eubanks name when they were adults.
What this means for Beard is that she can only trace that branch of her father’s family tree back to 1900 before the records stop — at least until five years ago, when Beard obtained an account on Ancestry.com, which opened up a world of records and matching DNA samples to help piece together her family tree. Some branches, she said, go as far back as the 1500s, and nearly all take her ancestry back to northern Europe — particularly Great Britain.
And in the case of Lillie Eubanks’ branch, Beard is making progress.
“I was able to find my great-grandmother’s family through DNA,” she said. “I’ve connected to third and fourth cousins and found out her name was Taylor.”
That’s where the story stops — for now.
Doing the research
Beard’s no stranger to poring through census data, wills and other historic records of local history and genealogy. Growing up, her favorite subject was history.
“I’ve always loved researching and I’ve always loved reading,” she said.
For the last 10 years, she’s been helping others — mostly people who were adopted — track down family members. She’s submitted samples of her DNA to both Ancestry.com and 23andMe, two companies which analyze DNA to help narrow down locations and ethnicities of a person’s ancestry. Ancestry.com also links to archives of historic records, which anyone who has an account can search.
That means people like Beard, who both have an account and submitted DNA, can find other members with matching DNA and cross-reference their family trees to find common ancestors. According to an email from Ancestry.com to The Dispatch, members have created more than 100 million family trees. Other similar companies have done the same.
That was the case for Starkville resident Kay Parker, who began submitting male family members’ DNA for testing with Family Tree Maker, a company that branched off from Ancestry.com, about eight years ago.
She had gotten into genealogy in 2009 when she and an old friend got together on vacation.
“I did not know anything about genealogy prior to that, but we met at a library and she showed me a census where my grandparents (were) on it and I was hooked,” Parker said.
A couple of years later, she had her brother and another male Parker in the area submit Y DNA, which is passed from father to son and can confirm direct male ancestors.
“(The other Parker) was a very good researcher and he had taken his lineage back to the 1600s,” Parker said. “So what I know is on his line, I have a common grandfather somewhere … but I don’t know where it is. I’ve been able to trace my Parker lineage back to Jacob Parker who was born in 1753 and he was a sergeant in the militia and he’s a (Revolutionary War) patriot.”
Parker has also submitted a sample of her own autosomal DNA, which takes DNA from both father and mother. That means a match found online could be related through any branch on the family tree.
“You’re not looking for your name anymore, and sometimes you have a match to a person (whose) name you don’t even recognize,” Parker said. “But if neither one of you have done your paper trail, you have no way of determining how you’re related or even if you’re related.”
That’s key, she said. DNA can provide the biological link between people, but without “proof documents” — census records, birth and death certificates, and other records that place a person in a time and place — it’s a stab in the dark how people are related.
“You have to do your research,” she said. “There’s no way getting around the research.”
The Revolution, Jamestown and beyond
By tracing their family trees back through the generations, both Beard and Parker have confirmed ancestors and discovered new ones, some of whom can be placed in the most iconic moments of American history.
Parker discovered her second great-grandfather is the son of Mississippian Joseph Powell McGehee, who fought in the Civil War and died in a hospital outside Atlanta in 1864. McGehee is a direct descendant of Revolutionary War patriot Lt. William McGehee, who fought with the Prince George County, Virginia, militia. He is a direct descendant of Adam Thoroughgood (or possibly Thowogood), who at age 19, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1621, less than 20 years after it was settled by the English.
Her family history goes back even farther in English history, she said.
“I have a niece that told me when I first started doing it … ‘When you find someone that’s not a farmer let me know,'” Parker said. “When I found out that we directly descended (from) William the Conqueror (the Norman ruler who successfully invaded England in 1066), I asked her if that was good enough.”
Beard discovered her great-great-grandfather was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, taken prisoner and held at Fort Delaware.
“There (are) actually less than 100 recorded escapes from Fort Delaware, and he was one of those,” she said.
On her mother’s side of the family, she’s confirmed family members who are everything from Revolutionary War soldiers to members of English nobility and even royalty. She’s learned of a great-aunt who died under “suspicious circumstances” and whose children were sent to live in an orphanage. She’s even connected with their descendants.
“I’ve identified 18 Revolutionary War soldiers,” Parker added. “I had a great-something grandfather that was an interim governor in Maryland, just things that I just never would have imagined.”
‘The one to find out’
Parker believes DNA testing and genealogy has become popular as the baby boomer generation gets older.
“I say when we’re young, we’re too busy trying to find out where we’re going to think about where we’ve been,” she said. “So when we’re older is when we want to know where we’ve been … when we start thinking about family history. And the baby boomers are such a large population now.
“The younger people see the commercials and they don’t understand that … you don’t learn anything unless you do the paperwork,” she added. “… It’s not just do the DNA testing and your ancestors are revealed.”
Beard has a slightly different take on it. Partially, she said, it appeals to history lovers. For her, though, she simply wants to discover things no one else knows.
That’s why she’s looked less at her mother’s side of the family — filled with Revolutionary and Civil war soldiers — and focused instead on her father’s side, and in particular the parents of Lille Eubanks.
“It’s a mystery,” she said. “It’s intriguing to me. I want to be the one to figure it out.”
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