Thankful Thursday - Sharing Research

I have been a member of NSDAR since 2003.  My cousin and I joined at the same time in the same chapter.  MY aunt, her cousin, had been a member since the early 1970s and had tried for some time to get us to join.  We all joined under the patriot, Henry Hatevil Fall.  This was the line that had been proven by my aunt/ her cousin.  There were many clues to other family lines in her research.  I started researching to expand on this information after the two of us joined NSDAR.  I discovered other patriots that could be added to our membership as supplementals.  I found Joel Higley, Stephen Cushing, James Mitchell, and recently Simon Graves.  All of these were in the database at www.dar.org.  I have other ancestors who lived in America at the time of the revolution so I keep my eyes open to other possible patriots.  A few months ago, I found Joseph Holly/Holley.  His son, Numon Holly/Holley married Elizabeth Fall, daughter of Henry Hatevil Fall.  Joseph is not in the NSDAR database.  I was fortunate that his widow filed for a pension and in the pension it names their children who are living at that time, Numon being one of them.  I went to www.fold3.com and hit the jackpot.  The pension file was 32 pages with all of the details needed to prove another line.  I also found his service record.  I then obtained Numon's will, which names my great great grandmother as his daughter.  I am still gathering other proofs before I submit a supplemental application.  I have always shared my findings, not only with my cousin who is a member of NSDAR, but will all of my cousins.  For Christmas this year, my cousin gave me a subscription to Ancestry.com.  I feel overwhelmed by her generosity and I am very thankful that she thought me worthy of such a gift.

I am a firm believer is sharing original source documents for the benefit of all.   This is the reason I work as a volunteer for the IA GenWeb project as the County Coordinator for Lucas County.  My main purpose here is to transcribe original records.  I hope with my subscription to Ancestry that I will find some documents that I can transcribe for those Lucas County researchers.

I will keep on searching to expand our genealogy and perhaps I will find more patriots for us!