Morgan, Meet Morgan

This post comes under the “Anything That Strikes My Fancy” part of this blog’s theme.

I’ve been working on my family’s genealogy on and off since Darling Daughter was a toddler. She’s now twenty-three, and I’ve gotten more serious about the project. In this case, “serious” means trying to get my stuff together so I have one working family tree instead of many, i.e. one on paper, one on Ancestry.com, one on FamilySearch.org, and one on the Heredis program on my computer.

Crazy, right? But that’s what happens when I only work sporadically.  I lose track of where I was, making multiple starts in multiple places.

Thus far, I’ve merged the ones from Ancestry and Heredis, and am working on transferring the information from Family Search and my paper trees and family group sheets onto Heredis.

When I get bored, I turn my attention to some of my “brick walls.” For this you should picture a barricade encircling the sixth generation with just enough windows to get the occasional peek at what I’m missing.

One lightbulb moment occurred a few months back, when I reached the Morgan branch of my family and discovered this direct ancestor was born in Morgantown, West Virginia.

A Morgan born in Morgantown. My synapses went into overdrive, as I deduced the obvious. The city must have been named after a member of my family. (It was actually founded by them.)

Since my family came north to pursue better economic opportunities, it was a shock to discover I’m descended from one of West Virginia’s founding families (some say The Founding Family).

Fast forward to two weeks ago, when a friend emailed me out of the blue and mentioned she’d been working on her family’s genealogy also. We decided to set up a field trip to our local historical library, and in one of emails flying back and forth to organize this, she mentioned finding her family’s direct link to Zackquill Morgan.  He’s the son of Morgan Morgan who is believed to have established the first permanent settlement in what is now West Virginia.

Photo published by flyingmoose  on http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM7GDN_Morgan_Morgan

Zackquill was my 5x Great Grandfather. Turns out he’s hers too.

This means we’re 6th cousins.

At least, that’s what I think it means. I tend to get a bit lost on the consanguinity charts, no matter how logically they’re presented.

My cousin and I hope to learn more on Saturday when we visit the research library.