A Brief Word on Methodology

  The method we now most frequently employ has come to be termed "Cluster Theory."  This is nothing more than a fancy-ass name for a really basic principle:  that early American families did not move on their own.  They didn't just pack up the U-Haul and head on down the road.  Rather, due to the rigors and dangers of travel back then, they moved in groups.  People in these groups tended to come from the same 'neighborhood' and then tended to settle in the same area when they reached their destination.
  In essence, they were 'clustered' together when they started, and continued to cluster together when they arrived.  As there are very few old documents that actually prove that a person moved from one place to another, being able to show the same associated names in both locations is paramount is really proving that we are talking about the same person in both instances.
 
   Sadly, most 'bad' genealogy ignores this point.  Rather, many practice what I've termed "Spot it, Got it!" genealogy.   This is best defined by an example:
    A person knows that ancestor John Doe arrived in Orange Co and shows up on documents there by 1785.   They then go looking all over the place for another John Doe somewhere else.  Finding one, in say Philadelphia, they concluded "That's him!"   This is then posted on the internet...becomes 'gospel.'... and you eventually have the type of information that's contained in 80% of the Ancestry Trees.  There is no other associational evidence to even begin to demonstrate that this is really the same person.

    While there are other interesting aspects of Cluster Theory, there's no reason to go into them right now.  I'm sure they may well come up as the posting continue, however.  But an obvious one would be that these clusters of families tended to frequently inter-marry.
    Which leads to a brief final word on Wedding Bonds.  Over the years I've encountered hundreds of these bonds in research.  At this point there are only about a dozen or so where I cannot make the family connection of the bondsman/bondsmen to one of the parties being wed.  Sometimes it took years to figure out the connection.  Just recently, 2 bonds that I was sure had no family connection yielded to a new discovery that showed that there was, in fact, a very likely one.  Thus, we tend to take is pretty much as a 'Law' that if a person is bonding the wedding, they are 'family.'  If nothing else, you can figure that's going to be true a good 90+% of the time.

    Enough said.  Let's move to the good stuff.
                                                                                                         (Kevin)