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From: strickln@ihlpa.UUCP (Stricklen)
Newsgroups: net.roots
Subject: Genealogical advice needed
Message-ID: <981@ihlpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jan-86 15:59:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpa.981
Posted: Fri Jan  3 15:59:29 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 05:27:22 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 38

I am rather new to genealogical research, so I thought I would start with
something that appeared simple.  I started tracing back the origins of my
mother's maiden name, Whitney, as I thought it would be fairly well documented.
A great-uncle of mine had accumulated some information on the last few
generations before he died ten years.  I started with this.  I then got a
membership with the New England Historic Genealogical Society and ordered
some works following various branches of the Whitney family that emigrated
from England.

My great-uncle traced back the Whitney to one Jesse M. Whitney born in 1812
who married a woman named Anna in Kentucky.  My mother has a ledger book
showing money he and his sons earned dating from 1858 to 1864.  Some of the
entries show he worked repairing clocks.  A three-volume work I borrowed
from the Genealogical Society has an entry for a Jesse B. Whitney, born
in Vermont in 1810 who married a woman who bore him one son.  The book says
he disappeared shortly after the son's birth.  It also says his sisters had
been in touch with him once after he left and that he had gone to Ohio to
be a "clock peddler."

Illinois census records of 1850 show a Jesse B. Whitney with a wife Anna
and children bearing the names my great-uncle has recorded living in Scott
county.  The census records show that this Jesse B. Whitney was both
illiterate and born in Vermont.  It would appear to me that these two
persons are one in the same.  With this link, I can use available material
to show lineage in England back further than anyone would want.

I am afraid that a "more professional" genealoger would want more proof than
the circumstancial information I have.  Is this true?  If I do need more
substantiation, it would likely be difficult.  If this is the same person,
he may have gone to great lengths to hide his tracks from his first wife
(whom he likely never divorced) and to hide his past from his second wife
(to whom he likely lied through his teeth).  Can anyone give me some advice? 

Thanks,

Steve Stricklen
AT&T Bell Laboratories
ihnp4!ihlpa!strickln