My most often cited sources

My most often cited sources fall into three categories: people, places, and documents.

The people whose work I most often cite are:

• James P. McGuire, whose knowledge about all generations of the McGuire family is encyclopedic. Jim writes sporadically but often on Genforum.com. I hope he writes a book someday. I'll be first in line with a check!

• My aunt Jeanne Hardy Tipton, whose work on Moses D. Pinson's family broke through the brick wall of Moses's parents to find his mother, Mary Polly probably Dennis Pinson Voglin Peters. Jeanne taught me to document everything before saying "The fact is..."

• Jessie J., who first discovered the identity of Britta Ann Green in the 1850 Census as "Beauty Ann McKinnie" in the household of John McKinnie in Shelby County.

• My lovely and sweet-smelling cousin, who is as crazy about genealogy as I am. And she makes the best soaps around at Naturalimpulse.com.

• Kay King, professional genealogist extraordinaire, whose work has helped me identify facts in other family lines. I wish you were still working, Kay.

• Along the way I'd like to thank Barbara Strength, Jim Reinier, and all the folks on Genforum.com and Ancestry.com who answer my numerous queries.

The places I most often visit are:

• Birmingham Public Library. The staff is wonderful, and there is so much information. Every time I think I have found everything relating to my family, I find a new direction or a new piece of data.

• Samford University. The repository for Alabama's Baptist Church records, especially those of Mt. Hebron Baptist Church of Leeds.

• The Huntsville Public Library. Has a copy of Leeds: Her Story that I use every time. There are many more sources there that I haven't explored, and that I haven't seen in another library.

• The Shelby County Historical Society. I would camp out there for a week if I could. Beautiful building, original documents, knowledgeable helpers. I've only begun to scratch the surface there.

Other places I haven't been but can't wait to see are Mt. Hebron Baptist Church in Leeds, the state archives. Wallace State. Bibb Courthouse. And...and...and...and....

The documents I refer to most are:

• The partial settlement of Davidson McGuire's will and the 1884 court case re: the sale of Davidson's land at the Jefferson County Courthouse.

• The Charles Kelley Bible. A transcript can be found here:

http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/shelby/bibles/bb9.txt

• The records of the Mt.Hebron Baptist Church at Samford University.

• Various documents at the Shelby County Historical Society. Their webpage is here:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~alshelby/shelby1.html

On the webpage you'll find many searchable databases such as marriage indexes, court cases, mortality schedules, and so on. You'll also find a gazillion indexes to wills, guardianship papers, censuses.

• The federal and state censuses and the mortality schedules at Ancestry.com. Still the best genealogy website as far as I am concerned.

• The message boards at Genforum.com, Rootsweb.com, and Ancestry.com. I have found so many leads and broken through so many walls there. For example, I found the husband of Susan McKinney, niece of Britta Ann Green, by reading the Lemley message board at Rootsweb.com. His middle name was Pinkney; all I knew was James P. Lemley. But he was called "Pink," so I was able to find him in several other censuses.

• Family maps of Shelby, Jefferson, Bibb and St. Clair County. These books are available at the Birmingham Public Library.

Sources I can't wait to visit that will soon join my most often cited sources:

The files at Wallace State, Judge Peterson's files at the Shelby County Historical Society, the state archives.

So many sources. So little time in AL! Sigh...

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