FamilySearch.org has created a fun new feature that tries to see if you are related to your friends. For the annual Continental Congress of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Family Search set up a temporary comparison site just for DAR members.
To play, you must enter some amount of your family tree on the FamilySearch world tree and it connects you to what other people have entered. Not all entries are substantiated with genealogical proof, or at least not enough proof for today’s standards. Some results may not be real.
Am I Related to Other DAR Members?
I decided to play for two reasons. First to see if I was related to somebody in DAR that I knew, but didn’t know I was related to. Second was to look at my problem people and see what relationships others had found for them.
Fish, Work
As always, there are new things for me to explore on the troublesome FISH and WORK lines. But I was most interested in my child thief in the family tree, Thomas Featherston and what happened to him when he arrived in the British Colonies in the autumn of 1775.
Featherston and Poland
I saw that this world tree had connected Thomas Featherston’s wife to parents called Samuel Poling and Lena Wyckoff. And if you follow that tree up far enough and come back down, I would be related to several Presidents, inventors, scientists, and artists.
Proving Parents Are Related to Child
Location
But were Samuel Poling and Lena Wyckoff, Margaret’s parents? The location sounded good. Samuel and Lena lived in Berkely County, Virginia in 1775. The county changed names and states, but was known for grist mills. As an adult, Thomas was a very prosperous owner of multiple grist mills. And it was very close to Allegany County, Maryland where Thomas and Margaret were married.
Church Records
I looked at several of the trees with the Poling/Poland/Polen family. Samuel and Lena were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. They registered their marriage, the childrens’s and their baptisms in the church registries. But there was no Margaret listed with Samuel and Lena as parents. By itself, this doesn’t eliminate Margaret from the family but it doesn’t prove she belonged either.
Court Records
Next I looked for court records. I did not find any deed records in the area for all the spellings of “Polen” I could think of, but I did find the probate records for Samuel. In his will he lists all his children and what they inherited – property and responsibilities. There was no Margaret listed even though she was still alive and lived nearby with her husband Thomas.
Could Margaret have been disowned? After all, her parents could not have been thrilled to have a convict in the family. But no, even disowned children are mentioned in wills at this time with either a nasty comment or a token “one pence”.
I am Not Related!
But this old Berkely County area might still provide parents for Margaret with more research. There were several families living there in the 1770s with similar names. And the local militia promised all men who served in the Revolutionary war would get 100 acres of free land. The recruits did not receive the land, but it was a good inducement to join the militia.
