The purpose of this site is to share information which the author has come across in hopes it
will be helpful to others pursuing their family history. Cognizant of the
difficulties experienced in back-tracking his own ancestors, he wants to
ease the way for future genealogists.
One of the chief genealogical difficulties lies in making connections: A
piece of data from one source isn't obviously connected to another piece in
another. Very often, the whole means more than the sum of its parts. On this
site, we try to make as many of those connections as we are able.
In the meantime, if you should happen to possess some tidbit of information
to cast light on the mystery of Michael Taylor's parents, please don't be shy
about sharing it. You can read more about Michael here.
All of the material presented or referenced here has been "vetted"
— reviewed by the author and thought to have
genealogical value. Where there are questions or issues (accuracy, etc.)
comments try to point these out. More comments on reproduced data help
relate presented information to other, not so obvious, information. What
value the information here has for you, the viewer, is for you to decide.
We include information from several counties in the east-central portion of
North Carolina and we include many varieties of information from many sources.
We do not include births or deaths, because civil registration of these is a
20th century practice; such records are hard to come by for the 18th & 19th
centuries.
Most of the material is focused on Taylor-surnamed individuals in Craven and
neighboring counties in the 18th and early 19th centuries. However, it isn't
strictly limited to those ranges. Families inter-associate and intermarry. They
move from place to place and, even if they don't move, political boundaries
change.. Persons births & deaths overlap eras. Where there's a question, we tend
toward more inclusivity.
However, all research must have limits as to scope. We don't focus much on
the period before 1725 (still very early for this area). Our ancestors left the
area (for Tennessee) in the early 19th century. Most of our searches cut off
about 1825. We concentrate more on the northern part of Craven County (along
with present Lenoir) than we do on the southern part.
You've seen plenty of sites that give narrowly-focused information, in
bits & pieces. You've seen sites that consist of other peoples' family
trees and sites that are only about marriages or deeds. These are often valuable resources, but there are many of them,
unrelated to each other. There are some sites that provide historical or
social & economic context, but these aren't related to the individual data.
We elected to do something different: to provide contexts and overviews, in
addition to the individual records.
Certainly, there's a wealth of "look-up records" here. We ask & try to
answer the journalist's questions: Who, what, when, where, how and why.
The all-too-missing
ingredient in most sites is understanding. Genealogy is, in some respects, time
travel. We must put ourselves into a time when culture, economics and many other
things are not what we take for granted today.
We believe that understanding comes
only by considering what records say happened with our ancestors in the context
of what was happening generally at that time and place.
We have used many methods to gather the information here:
We've searched the World-Wide Web.
We've searched books and compilations of abstracts & extracts..
We've combed through archives of original records.
We've visited courthouses & cemeteries.
We've "eyeballed" the terrain.
As we've learned about proper genealogical techniques, we've implemented
them. {Fortunately, most of the Craven information was acquired
after a grounding in genealogical methods had been gained.}
We're indebted to Elizabeth Shawn Mills and others who've promulgated guidelines
for evaluating evidence.
We've used multiple techniques to analyze what we've found. Much of the data has been analyzed
by means of spreadsheets and relational databases, as well as applying logic and
good old-fashioned common sense.
Site development began in the Spring of 2008 and the first pages were posted
in the Summer. Several months later, it is still being
developed and fleshed out. The information to present has not been exhausted; it's still being
converted to a Web-amenable form.
The author, Ralph Taylor, has been practicing genealogy and pursuing
his ancestors since 1995. He is a frequent contributor to several
genealogy-related electronic mailing lists and a moderator or one. He is a
volunteer member of a Taylor surname Y-DNA project administration team.
Prior to beginning genealogy, he was a manager and corporate
analyst for a large health-care organization; this experience gave him skills in
gathering and analyzing large amounts of complex data and synthesizing it into
digestible information. Since 1995, he has been the CEO of a consulting firm
called "Information Tools", which relies on those skills to help small
businesses.
He was born in California and now lives in Colorado. He's an avid and expert skier and sailor.
He is a veteran creator of many Websites, having designed several of
various subject matter, types & purposes. To contact him,
e-mail
or write to:
Craven Taylors
6174 So. Macon Way
Englewood, CO 80111, USA
