A New 4th Great-grandfather

Rufus D. Stevens in the 1850 census
St. Clair County, Michigan

After years of work and some false starts, I was able to add the names of a new-to-me fourth-great-grandfather and his parents to my family tree. It’s been many years since I had a new name to add and it’s time for me to go back and do some of those beginning things when I’ve located a new ancestor.

Briefly those things are:

  • familiarize myself with the geographic area in which the families lived, the history, and the extant sources.
  • search the genealogical literature for articles on these families.
  • review my autosomal DNA matches to see if there are trees that include these families.
  • evaluate information on these “new” ancestors to make certain that the information makes sense, is consistent, and does not have gaps in logic or reasoning.
  • update my genealogical files to include the new information.

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