My Genealogy Obsessions

Last weekend was a very busy one for me and I missed out on Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, “Signs You Have GOCD,” inspired by Michael John Neill’s post “10 Signs You Have Genealogy OCD” at Rootdig.com (also see Randy’s “SNGF ‘Genealogy OCD’ Compendium”). This subject is so up my alley. And I missed it.

But it did get me to thinking about things I really am obsessive about in my genealogy research:

1. The Moore Family. All of them. All of Samuel Moore’s descendants. All of the Moores who show up in Greenville, South Carolina who may in some way connected to these Moores. All the stories. Every scrap of material - besides Greenville and Anderson Counties in South Carolina and Dallas and Baylor Counties in Texas, I have to go to Henry County, Georgia (Bud Mathis Moore and Freeman Manson Moore were there at one point, plus an Andrew Moore who looks kinda promising...), plus DeKalb County, Georgia and Cleburne County, Alabama (Freeman’s son William S. Moore was in those counties, and we know so little about him), plus Izard County, Arkansas (Preston E. Moore was there in 1870, and he is a Topic of Special Obsession (TSO)).... And please, please - Samuel Moore’s wife (wives?) and parents? No piece of information is too insignificant, no courthouse is too remote. I will get the information on these people.

2. My #1 Brick Wall, Susan Elizabeth Smith Bonner Brinlee. Looking for a Smith in Tennessee is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I Will Do It.

3. “Reverse orphans.” I described this phenomenon when I hosted the “85th Editions of the Carnival of Genealogy: Orphans and Orphans” and was surprised to find out how many other researchers also get involved in researching these people with no direct descendants. And although Preston Moore is apparently not a reverse orphan, he’s still a Moore, so I am still obsessed with him.

4. Visiting and researching in all the states that my ancestors have lived in, which covers all of the South and border states (except for Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi), Vermont, and Illinois as well as a good part of the mid-Atlantic states.

5. Learning everything there is to know about the Elisha Lewis-Rosannah Dalrymple family and the Elisha Berry Lewis-Martha Poole family.

6. Finding all of my husband’s ancestors back to the first immigrants (his ancestors arrived here between the 1850s and 1910s, so I am hoping this is feasible). And, as usual, this includes all of the collateral lines.

7. Using some clues from DNA results to find the parents of brothers Hiram Brinlee Sr. and George Brinlee.

8. Finding George Floyd’s parents: was his father William Floyd (as several of us think) or James Floyd (as written by the grandson of George's younger brother Ransom to my great-grandfather Charles Augustus Floyd)?

9. Finding out how my great-great grandmother Emily Tarrant fits into the Greenville, South Carolina Tarrant families.

10. There is no #10 right now. But I have a feeling that research will lead me to another one - you know, the next brick wall. One that really intrigues me. One whose story I absolutely MUST know.