52 Ancestors 2026: Long-Lasting – Vox Populi

 

The American experiment has a foundation based on a government that expresses the voice of the people, or vox populi. We’ve never achieved perfection, but one of the positive changes in our nation, arising from the colonial period, has been the idea that government should represent the interests of the people, by the people (and for the people, to round out the phrase). This ideal distinguished the British colonies from the monarchies of Europe. In Great Britain, colonial government was expressed through the companies that bankrolled the colonies and the charters they were granted.

But my family had to have some troublemakers (maybe that’s a long-lasting trait as well). Many of my ancestors were Reformed Protestants who ran afoul of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and the crowned heads of France, Spain, and England. Their heretical ideas reflected the rise of the middle classes as feudalism waned and included a distrust of human nature such that they believed power should not reside solely in one figure of authority, such as a king or a pope. When the colonies opened up, they were among those who sought refuge away from the royal courts.

The Reformed Protestant churches moved away from hierarchy and toward greater representation. Pastors were still important, but churches themselves were governed by elders (elected representatives) or by congregational votes. These republican and democratic forms of church government provided a foundation for our current system.

But I think my ancestors took it a step further. As I’ve written before, Stephen Hopkins made his second journey to the New World on the Mayflower and was a signer of the Mayflower Compact, which distributed governing power among the adult males of the colony. Interestingly enough, it was the non-Puritan passengers who insisted that, since they had landed somewhere other than their intended destination, they were free to do what they wanted. Stephen Hopkins had witnessed the debacle that was Jamestown and may have been one of those advocates for self-governing. With the Puritans being their own rebellious selves—and highly educated—we do not need to wonder why New England became a hotbed of revolution in the 18th century.

But that is not all. I have found many ancestors who fought for the Patriot side during the American Revolution, and the more I dig, the more I find. Our Declaration of Independence, now 250 years old, represented the views of the elected Continental Congress. Through bumps, twists, and turns, and even changes in who has a voice, that ideal has endured. It was the inspiration for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered to dedicate the cemetery for those “gave their lives so that that nation might live.”.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Photo:

Great Room of the National Archives

52 Ancestors 2026: Multiples – Threes

 

The number 3 has all kinds of meanings. In folklore: “Third time’s the charm.” In Christianity: the Holy Trinity, Peter’s three denials, and the Resurrection on the third day. In public speaking: making three main points or using three examples. For this prompt, I thought I would use three examples of ancestors who married (sort of) three times. I’ve written about these three people before, but each example tells us something about the era and the circumstances of their lives.

The first is Susannah Shattuck, my Puritan ancestor who lived from around 1643 to 1717 and represents the second generation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I’ve written about her remarkable life before, including her three marriages to Joseph Morse, John Fay, and Thomas Brigham. She was twice widowed and found a way to raise her six Morse children, her four Fay children and three Fay stepchildren, and seven Brigham stepchildren. I haven’t found any contemporary descriptions or remembrances of her (men seem to get more attention), but the names of her children reflect her Puritan piety, while her widowhood and sheer number of children demonstrate her perseverance and family-raising skills. She seems to have been one thread of continuity in her community. It’s also notable that the Shattuck, Morse, Fay, and Brigham families were prominent New England families, and she had ties to all three, not to mention the other families her children married into, such as the Larkins, Joslins, Newtons, and Holbrooks.

My second example is not a direct ancestor but a cousin, Artimesia Curry, my Kentucky relative who lived from 1824 to 1914. Her first marriage was to John Gabhart, with whom she had four children. Artimesia was widowed and then married George W. Bennett, whom she divorced in 1871, just days before marrying Hiram Cunningham. We learn a great deal about the times from her story. The Commonwealth of Kentucky was entering a promising phase but was also embroiled in the Civil War as a divided and fiercely contested border state. Hiram was loyal to the Union and served in the U.S. Army. It was gratifying to see his loyalty to his country and his contribution to preserving the Union, but it was also remarkable that Hiram and Artimesia persisted in their efforts to obtain pensions (veteran’s and widow’s) for his service. Pension records are often the stuff genealogists’ dreams are made of. Thanks to Artimesia’s precise memory, I was able to learn about another branch of the Curry family into which Hiram had married. Her depositions, combined with the fact that she had one of the relatively rare 19th-century divorces, contribute to a picture of a strong and determined woman.

My grandfather, Stephen Anthony Reed, and his marriages break the pattern a bit. His second relationship, with a woman identified as his wife in the 1940 census, may not have been formalized with an actual marriage certificate. We do, however, have a marriage certificate for his last pairing. Grandpa Steve was born in 1892 in Missouri and married Ruby Fast in 1911. They were both young—19 and 17 years old, respectively. They had five children, although their eldest died young.

His second relationship was with Margaret Branstuder Stephenson, and this household, which included Margaret’s two daughters—one who had previously married at sixteen and another who apparently had special needs—appears in the 1940 census. By 1950, he was living with Verna Fultz Verbeck. Like Margaret, her husband was still living at the time of these census records, although he was living in a different household. Interestingly, Verna’s husband was reported as “widowed” in the 1950 census. Steve and Verna married in 1961, and he died in 1973. If nothing else, I learned about some very complicated relationships, perhaps brought on by difficult circumstances.

Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Missouri are three important states in my genealogy, and in this essay they represent three different regions in three different eras. Family trees are complicated, and a lot gets buried as family stories fade and records become sporadic. It’s easy to talk about the “good old days,” but success was never guaranteed. Life required hard work, perseverance, and sometimes being in the right place at the right time. But if we dig deeply enough, we can sometimes piece together a broad picture and catch a glimpse of the past from the information that survives.

Picture:

Created by the author using Google Gemini (2026)

52 Ancestors 2026: Neighbors and Community – John Reed’s Tangled Web of Litigants

 

Genealogists can get a lot of important information and context by examining the Friends, Associates, and Neighbors—the FAN Club. In my John Reed Notebook project, however, it seems that John’s FANs were mostly linked to him through litigation, which is a very different kind of social interaction. Although these court cases do not present him in a particularly flattering light, they reveal a great deal about his family ties and, perhaps, his character.

For starters, we have John’s family. From the will of his father-in-law, Alexander Harrison of Fairfield County, Ohio, we learn that at the time of his death in 1829, John owed Alexander money that was to go to his mother-in-law, Susannah. We can also learn more about Alexander and his brother George Harrison (not the Beatle) and George’s move to Ohio in 1804.

We pick up the trail in Morgan County with William Reed, who was a neighbor rather than a close relative. When William died in 1852, leaving a wife, Julia Ann, and seven young children, John became administrator of the estate in 1853. He then managed to sell William’s land below market value to Daniel Sims, a neighbor who was, at the time, also a son-in-law, having married John’s daughter Sarah Ann. Sims did not own the property for long. He sold it to Reas Barkhurst for a tidy profit and then went west to Missouri. This part of the neighborhood was friendly to John: Sims got a nice starter farm and a profitable deal, while Barkhurst was able to cash in on land whose value increased during and after the Civil War.

Of course, William Reed’s heirs, once they came of age, were not such fans of John and eventually took him to court. After a series of lawsuits, they finally received compensation for the undervaluation of their land. These lawsuits provide us with more information about William’s children and their spouses.

But John’s duties as administrator had further repercussions. His neighbors had served as sureties on his bond, guaranteeing that he would properly administer the estate. As his dealings began to look increasingly questionable, the sureties went to court to avoid being held liable for John’s actions. Two of those sureties were brothers Samuel and Joseph Miller. But the Millers were also family. In 1850, John’s son John Linley Reed married their sister Elisabeth Miller, and another son, Lindley D. Reed, married her sister Eliza Jane Miller.

The Millers were about to become even more entangled with the Reeds. After John was widowed in 1857, he married the also-widowed matriarch of the Miller family, Elizabeth Dolman Miller, in 1860. The couple lived together for eleven years, but Elizabeth’s death led to another set of lawsuits. Her Miller heirs believed that John had improperly retained funds that Elizabeth had brought into the marriage and sought to recover them from his estate.

But this wasn’t the end of the lawsuits. Just a few months after Elizabeth died, John, himself infirm, moved into the household of Clement Fuller, who had married John’s daughter Evaline. John died in 1872, after spending only about six months with the Fullers. Apparently, he had given them a promissory note to pay for his care during his final months, and the Fullers joined the growing list of plaintiffs by suing his estate.

There were also people in the Morgan and Muskingum County communities who were not related to John Reed but whose names appear here and there in the records. According to the 1860 census, widow Julia Ann Reed ended up living next door to John in Muskingum County. Whatever she received from the sale of William’s land, she was able to maintain a farm valued at $1,200, with another $250 in personal property. Her oldest son, 17 years old, helped on the farm.

Living with John were his daughter Mary Jane Reed Bay and her husband, Thomas Gordon Bay. Interestingly, one of the witnesses to a deed involving John Reed was James Bay, who was a cousin of Gordon Bay. Also in John’s household was John Lyder, a 70-year-old fellow Virginian. Were they friends from back east?

The task of managing John’s estate eventually fell to Edward Bethel, whose relationship to John is unknown. He took on the herculean task of defending the Reed estate against all comers. One clue to a possible relationship with the Reeds is the fact that a Bethel family lived next door to Clement and Evaline Fuller. Checking the census for more Bethels, we find Russell Bethel, Edward’s brother, married to Elizabeth Bay, who was a distant cousin of Gordon Bay.

When studying communities and neighbors in an area that had only recently been settled, it is hard not to uncover family ties among the people living there, with very few degrees of separation. With all these relationships, John Reed’s messy life left behind a messy estate. Edward Bethel defended the property the Reed children were to inherit against the heirs of William Reed (neighbors), the heirs of Elizabeth Dolman Miller Reed (in-laws and stepchildren), and John’s own son-in-law and daughter, with the various principals testifying against one another.

From this genealogical exercise, we learn about all the entanglements and disputes that could not be settled at family gatherings but instead had to be settled in the courthouses of Morgan and Muskingum Counties. And, at least, these legal proceedings were better than settling affairs in the style of the mythical Wild West.

Photo: 

Pepe Silvia meme https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-silvia

52 Ancestors 2026: A Day in the Life – A Shaker Day

 

A lot of oft-repeated truisms start with “There are two types of people in the world,” and go on to say something about morning people and night owls, dog people and cat people, or those who see people as falling into two types and those who see gradations. One of the traits sometimes described in terms of dualisms is the difference between people who are organized and follow routines and those who are carefree and spontaneous. As an inveterate list maker and daily planner, I can see some truth in that distinction. And how often is the “two types of people” statement followed by, “And they always seem to marry each other”?

We could go much deeper into discussions of opposites attracting, but this entry is more of an exploration of a very orderly religious sect that is part of my family history: the Shakers (or the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing). My paternal ancestors, the Bantas, were part of the mixed Dutch/Huguenot Conewago Colony that migrated to Kentucky in the early 1780s. Three Banta brothers (my first cousins six times removed) were among the founders of the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

Each day in the Village was marked by the hour. At 5 AM, a clock would strike and the villagers would wake up. Those assigned to tend the farm animals would take care of feeding them and, for the cows, milking them. Next came breakfast, followed by another strike of the clock signaling the start of farming, industry, and other chores. The farmers tended the crops and animals in the morning. The industrial work included making furniture and clothing, much of it for the village but also for sale to the outside world. At the striking of the noon bell, the villagers would meet for dinner, after which they began their afternoon work.

The day ended with supper, followed by prayer and meditation and lights out at 9 PM. Of course, the Sabbath was reserved for worship, along with the necessary farm activities. The Shakers also held special events featuring their signature singing and fervent dancing. Simple times and an eschatological worldview did not mean an absence of joy.

Throughout the day, the Shakers would assemble for prayer, anticipating and hoping for the Second Coming, which they believed was imminent. They wanted to be like the five wise bridesmaids in Matthew’s Gospel and live their daily lives in preparation.

For many in the early years of our nation, the wild days were times of opportunity, but some wanted a life of stability and an escape from the outside world. For them, the Shaker villages provided a sanctuary and an opportunity for women to be full members of the community, although the division of labor was usually based on sex. The Shakers were part of the religious revivals that characterized the early days of the Republic, but their enforced celibacy and the fact that the Second Coming still hasn’t happened meant that the colonies could not last. Their music and craftsmanship, however, have endured.

We may not understand their theology, but many of us who are list makers and planners might envy their routines. To a point.

Photo: From https://blog.shakervillageky.org/today-in-pleasant-hill-history/

52 Ancestors 2026: Free Space – Digging Deeper with NotebookLM

 

I’ve written before about my Reed-Harrison brick wall (and my shady maternal 5th-great-grandfather) and how I’m using AI to help find my way around it. While I’ve learned a great deal—though no major breakthrough yet—I wanted to describe how I’ve been using Gemini’s NotebookLM (now simply Notebook) as part of that research.

If you already use Google services, getting started with Notebook is straightforward. The interface consists of three panes: Sources, Chat, and Studio. Sources contain your input—documents, spreadsheets, and other files. Chat is where you enter prompts and receive responses. Studio serves as something of a repository and a playground, providing different ways to organize and present your findings.

So how did I use this new tool? First, I consulted Gemini in a separate chat, and it walked me through the setup, beginning with the creation of my source documents. Spending time planning and organizing at the outset can make a research project much more manageable. One early decision was to keep all my documents and spreadsheets in a folder on Google Drive and to use Google's own applications—Docs and Sheets. That allowed me to edit or add information online and then synchronize those files with the versions uploaded into Notebook's Sources environment. In the end, I had a collection of Google Docs and Sheets, each beginning with a two-digit number for easy sorting, along with several three-generation pedigree reports that I had downloaded and converted to text.

Since my focus was John Reed, some of the files were named 00_John_Reed_Narrative, 01_John_Reed_Timeline, 04_Muskingum_County_Records, and 11_John_Reed_Censuses. The narrative established my research objectives and held miscellaneous information that didn't fit elsewhere. The timeline followed the format suggested in Amy Johnson Crow's 31 Days to Better Genealogy. The census file contained tabulated information from each census, including the head of household, every family member's name, and the values of real and personal property.

The records files proved to be the most valuable—and the place where Notebook really demonstrated its strengths. Here I entered transcripts that I had obtained through FamilySearch's Full-Text Search. To keep everything organized, I maintained a separate research log in Google Sheets that recorded search terms, locations, years searched, source information, descriptions, and a Case ID (001, 002, and so on). Each transcript in my records document began with a header containing the Case ID, source, and image numbers before I pasted in the transcript itself.

Once I had accumulated enough information in each file, I uploaded it to the Sources pane. Each upload takes a few moments while Notebook analyzes the new material. Then it was finally time to enter my first prompt into the Chat pane. Unlike a standard chatbot, which may draw on its training data, search the internet, or occasionally make confident but unsupported assertions, Notebook restricts itself to the sources you have provided.

What did it return? In my case, it identified family relationships and inheritances, untangled who was suing whom, traced land transactions, and explained the legal terminology found in nineteenth-century court records. It also disentangled complicated family relationships and highlighted inconsistencies among the various records, especially in pedigree files I had downloaded from FamilySearch.

It summarized what I had learned about my ancestor John Reed:

Through the analysis of court transcripts, probate records, and census data, a detailed portrait has emerged of John Reed (1793–1873), a man whose life in Muskingum and Morgan counties, Ohio, was defined by a complex web of family ties and relentless legal conflict.

It also identified the key documents supporting its conclusions. My John Reed project quickly became complicated, with connections that would once have required stacks of index cards, a box of pushpins, and yards of string to keep straight. Instead, Notebook organized the evidence, identified relationships, and documented the reasoning behind its conclusions.

[T]rying to track these "neighborly" interactions manually across 100+ images of transcripts and three different census years would be a "nightmare."

With NotebookLM, you were able to:

• Distinguish between separate lineages: It quickly separated the "Delaware Reeds" (William’s family) from your "Virginia Reeds," proving that the litigation wasn't a brotherly spat, but a neighborly exploitation.
• Track Economic Evolution: The tool allowed you to see John Reed’s real estate value jump from $3,000 in 1850 to $25,000 in 1870, providing the "motive" for why his neighbors and heirs were so litigious.
• Map the Migration: By cross-referencing witnesses like James Bay and boarders like John Lyder (both from Virginia), you used the "neighbor" data to reinforce the Loudoun County/Harrison connection—the very "brick wall" you started with.

One feature I particularly appreciate is that the analysis evolves as the project grows. As I discover new records, I simply add them to the appropriate Google Docs file and synchronize it with Notebook. When I found records relating to John's father-in-law in an adjacent county, I created another document, added it to the Sources pane, and let Notebook incorporate the new evidence into its ongoing analysis.

And what about the Studio pane? Each chat response can be pinned as a note, but Studio offers much more. Notebook can generate videos, slide presentations, data tables (which are especially useful for mapping FAN clubs), and reports. Other study tools, such as flashcards and quizzes, are also available, although those are probably of limited value for genealogical research.

So, while I can see only a little daylight through my brick wall, Notebook has allowed me to develop a much richer understanding of John Reed, his family, his neighbors, and the complicated world in which they lived. But I'm not done digging. Yet.

52 Ancestors 2026: A Source I Want to Understand Better – All of Them?

 

With the internet age, genealogists have been able to accelerate their research as never before. There are so many websites and so many records available at the touch of a few keystrokes. Some resources remain behind paywalls, but many libraries—including FamilySearch Libraries—subscribe to library editions of these sites, making record gathering much more accessible. All of this access presents a new challenge: How can we make the best use of each resource, especially as they continue to add new features? This is the story of my own journey—what I've learned and what I still hope to learn.

When I started this endeavor 30 years ago, the tools were fewer and easier to master. I had a paternal pedigree chart that had been prepared for a probate case, a collection of Fast genealogy books, and family recollections that helped document several branches of my tree. I also had the advantage of living near a (then-called) Family History Center and Washington, D.C. Using Ancestral File, I discovered well-researched pedigrees that reached back to the earliest days of New Amsterdam and New England. From there, I found even more detail in published family histories housed at the Library of Congress. The National Archives yielded census records and Civil War pension files, although transcribing documents and making photocopies required considerable time and money. Even so, we were already moving beyond the days of traveling to county courthouses or writing to distant archives for copies of vital records.

And now? Online family trees of varying quality are everywhere, with Ancestry (Library Edition) and FamilySearch being my primary resources. But that's only the beginning. Census records are now searchable online. Countless genealogy books and county histories have been digitized and made available for download. FamilySearch has digitized millions of court, land, probate, and vital records and is using large language models to transcribe handwritten documents, making full-text searching possible—and leading to some remarkable discoveries. Artificial intelligence tools such as Gemini's NotebookLM can now help organize and analyze large collections of records and research notes.

How does one keep up with all this technology? FamilySearch produces excellent instructional videos, and numerous YouTube channels help researchers learn new techniques. Do I know how to use every tool? Certainly not. For example, I still find census searches easier in HeritageQuest (through my library subscription) than in FamilySearch, so that's one area I'd like to understand better. I also have library access to Fold3, but I sometimes struggle with its search interface. And I keep telling myself that I should learn to use the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) at the Allen County Public Library more effectively. I've watched the tutorials—I just haven't taken the time to give it a thorough test drive.

With the explosion of genealogy tools over the past three decades, it's difficult to imagine what the next 30 years will bring. Whatever comes next, there will always be people willing to teach the rest of us how to use these new resources. As for me, I think it's time to spend a little more effort mastering the tools already at my fingertips.

52 Ancestors 2026: Leisure Time – Making a Joyful Noise

 

So many of my ancestors came to colonial America in search of religious freedom. They were a godly bunch, imbued with the Protestant work ethic, so it can be difficult to imagine what kinds of leisure activities they enjoyed. But they did not work all the time. Sundays were reserved for worship and family, and although liturgical music could sometimes be controversial, it remained an important part of religious life. What hymns could be sung? Were musical instruments allowed? It is fascinating to trace how worship music evolved within the different denominations and across different periods of American history.

We do have a few clues. My Huguenot ancestors were undoubtedly familiar with the Genevan Psalter, and the singing of Psalm 137—translated into English as “By the Rivers of Babylon”—may have saved the life of my 8th-great-grandmother, Catherine Blanchan DuBois, when she was taken captive by Indigenous people in 1663. The Psalter was central to Reformed worship, as many Reformed Protestants rejected hymns that were not direct biblical texts. The fact that Catherine and the other Huguenot captives could recite the psalm from memory shows how deeply these songs were woven into their faith and daily lives.

My Puritan ancestors brought English psalters with them but soon produced their own American version, the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British North America. 

Interestingly, few of its settings are still sung today, whereas several tunes from the Genevan Psalter—most notably the Old Hundredth (“Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow”)—remain familiar in churches around the world.

Eventually, however, cracks began to appear in the Congregational Church's commitment to exclusive psalm singing. The influence of Isaac Watts, Charles and John Wesley, and the growth of Methodism introduced hymns that drew on broader biblical themes rather than the Psalms alone. Their descendants embraced this richer hymnody, with New England spiritual songs emphasizing repentance, redemption, and personal faith. By European standards these colonial and early American hymns may have seemed primitive, but they reflected the folk traditions and homespun character of the New World.

Perhaps the most distinctly American expression of sacred music came from the Shakers. Some of my Banta relatives were among the founders of the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Their worship featured joyful, energetic singing and movement. “Simple Gifts,” indeed.

As my ancestors' religious traditions evolved, so did their music. Westward expansion and the growth of Baptist and Methodist churches brought new styles of worship, including the gospel hymns of the nineteenth century, such as “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

Music clearly mattered to my ancestors. They took their day of rest seriously, just as they took their work seriously, and I suspect they approached worship with the same dedication. As a member of my church's chancel choir, I have had the opportunity to sing music from many different traditions, and I have found great joy in making “a joyful noise to the Lord.” I like to think that my forebears would have understood exactly what that meant.

Photo: The Whole Booke of Psalms, Stephen Day (dated 1640) - Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25799917