Mightier Acorns

Journeys through Genealogy and Family History

A parody of a family coat of arms designed with acorns as elements, with the motto "ex gladnis potentioribus" Latin for "from Mighty Acorns"
From Mighty Acorns

Category: Indiana

Families that lived in the state and left records behind there.

  • William “Zardie” Sly (1882–1954) – a.k.a. Jack St. Clair William Zardie Sly (1882–1954) took his middle name from his maternal grandfather, Gilbert Zardius Avery; most of the references I have found refer to him as “Zardy,” or by his initials “W.Z.” which probably served to distinguish him from the generations of William Slys related to…

  • Discovering the Shuffler family, part II Last week, I left off after making a few basic assumptions: But I still didn’t have any direct evidence that put Benjamin in Valentine’s household. I kept digging, thinking this would all be easily resolved as soon as I found one key piece of evidence. I found record after…

  • Discovering the origins of Valentine Shuffler (1853-1916) Writing an accurate history means leaving out assumptions. Sticking only to facts and evidence, and refraining from speculation about things that we cannot know, such as personal motivations or attitudes of the people involved. But writing a complete history means adding a human element to the facts—putting what…

  • They only point the way… the rest is up to us If you were a fly on the wall… or if I set up a Twitch stream… the scene that would play out in front of you might disrupt your image of the studious researcher. I know I like to think of myself as a…

  • Or “Being dragged down the rabbit hole” Our story today begins with the Bowen family. You may recall my September post on William Bowen: Wavetops: William Bowen, Jr. The WikiTree pages for William’s siblings were not well-developed, and since researching William (Sr.) led to a very well-done NEGHR report on them at American Ancestors1, I…

  • A Hard Row to Hoe You might recall I was very excited to find a book documenting this family last year: I finally got to spend some quality time looking at the evidence presented in this book and untangling some of the questions it raises – and when all is said and done, there are…

  • Where did Wiley Cowan come from? After the Revolutionary War, we lost track of James Callin. We don’t know for certain where he lived or how many children he had, but we are reasonably sure that he had two sons, James and John, who settled on a farm together between 1810 and 1816 in what…

  • Going four generations back to find another line This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find our first Ballard, the paternal grandmother of my wife’s paternal grandmother, June (Shuffler) McCullough: Virginia “Virgie” Ballard – 01 Feb 1889 – 04 Nov 1977 You might remember…

  • Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 3) Previously, in Still Finding James Callin, we looked at the Revolutionary War muster rolls, examining whatever they could tell us about him, and we talked about how they loosely support the statements made in George W. Callin’s 1911 Callin Family History. James, last noted in the…

  • Going four generations back to find another line This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Frederick – Daisy Deane Frederick – Dec 1871 – 14 Jan 1964 Daisy was the daughter of Lafayette Frederick (1837–1918) and Jane Eliza “Jennie” Smith (1840–1916),…