Grasping at Straws?

Am busy looking for and not finding my GGM Jane James Williams (1815 - ?) born in Wales and who, by family oral tradition, died in upstate New York, and Utica is mentioned most often. (See posts below.) Jane is elusive to put it mildly!

Yesterday I got frustrated with all the looking and not finding so I thought I'd change it up to get rid of the boredom. Went on Ancestry.com and started searching member trees for my GGF Daniel Williams' (1852 - 1920) brothers. Started by looking for William who was born 23 Jan 1856 and the youngest offspring of Jane and Thomas. By looking at the Williams family group photo taken in Troy NY about 1890 - 1900 you can just about guess which one is William.

I didn't hold out much hope of finding anything useful on Ancestry member trees, so there was no pressure and I had fun browsing. I always learn something when I browse in a relaxed manner because my mind is free to take notice of random items and develop possible patterns. Ever do that? You're just browsing and you think, hey there sure are a ton of Williams people in Marcy, Oneida County, New York... that's super interesting! And there were.

Along the way I noticed a Ancestry member tree with a photo of a William John Williams born in 1859 in Wales. In the 1910 census he's living with Jane Williams age 74, or 72. That means that Jane was born in 1836 or so and for sure is not our Jane Williams born in 1815. But the photo was interesting. OK, so maybe I wanted to see a family resemblance;)

See what happens when I get bored when I'm looking and not finding!

Photo of the day from an Ancestry Member Tree and my Archive:

The two William Williams'.
Ours is on the right.
Am thinking the chins are different.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/08/grasping-at-straws.html