I have a situation that has recently come up. You see, when I was rebuilding my father’s side of the family tree, I didn’t have the problem I’m about to explain.
I’ve finally made my way past the Mays line of my family tree, and now I’m onto the Slusher line. Funny thing is that 3 Slusher siblings married into the Mays family, so technically I’m still researching Mays’. Of the 10 Slusher children you see above, I’ve already researched 3 of them. Well technically two, because I couldn’t find the paper trail for the third. I’ve probably spent the past month going on down the Quesinberry line of the Slusher family. Technically I’m not related to the Quesinberrys. Oliver Quesinberry married Mahala Slusher, but I’m not descended through Mahala. I am descended through her sister Celia.
For some all this work on the Quesinberrys could be a waste of valuable research time. However, in rural Kentucky, it’s actually not. A lot of the times families in rural Kentucky had 10-15+ children. However, this is rural territory. A lot of times you have siblings of your ancestors marrying the siblings of their in-laws. I hope that made sense. It’s why I have 3 Slushers marrying 3 Mays‘. For me, anytime I run across Slusher, Mays, Click, Adkins, Whitt, or Crisp, I just go ahead and document everything I can about the siblings. Sometimes, when you’re in the midst of all these people, it’s hard to resist just adding everyone.
In my original family file, which was a combination of my Grandma’s copy of the family tree and online trees, I made the mistake of getting TOO carried away when it came to documenting the in-laws of my family tree. I haven’t done that this time yet. So far, I document the parent names of the person marrying into the family and most times I will also go ahead and add their siblings into the tree, it depends on how I’m feeling. I however, do not research the siblings in that case. I’m only researching the siblings of my blood relations. This rule gets thrown out for me if I run across a lot of people with the same surname marrying in. Then that surname gets bumped up on my priority list.
Of course, sometimes this gets me into trouble. Like today. I’ll admit to getting a little bored with the Quesinberry family. Not because they weren’t interesting, just that there were so many of them! Lawson Quesinberry‘s first wife gave birth to 16 children! Oy!
However, searching through newspapers has been an eye opener. A lot of the Quesinberry’s were LDS Church members. So when they were in the paper, they were IN the paper with full histories. It was glorious! Today I ran across the above article about Alfred Quesinberry. At first I wasn’t sure if it was Alfred, but after putting a few different clues together, I’m pretty sure it is. Most especially the Hunnewell, Greenup County, Kentucky reference. Alfred’s brother, Farris, spent a lot of years in that area at the same time. Farris‘s first marriage didn’t work out as well either.
After trying to find out the outcome of the bigamy debacle, I decided to do something a little more productive for the moment. I looked up the young son that is mentioned in the article. I found him in the Kentucky Birth Index and then was able to find another interesting bit on him.
Despite all the other wonderful information, I notice that it mention his parents Mr. and Mrs. Frank Newman. Yes, Pearl Griffith Quesinberry Sharp decided to give marriage another go, this time with Frank Newman. I found the couple in the 1930 census in Ashland, Kentucky. I even found another marriage record for Alfred Quesinberry in West Virginia.
What I did not find however, is Charles or Alfred in 1930! Where on earth are they? Do you see the wonderful mysteries and adventures you can find when you go on down the side branches of your family tree?
