Who I Thought I Was - My Judd Family

I love the show Who Do You Think You Are and now that it is over for the season, Friday nights are just not the same.  This year's shows were even better than last year's in that I felt like they were a bit more focused on the process of genealogy rather than just the results.  Also, while I realize that there were people behind the scenes who did most of the actual research, the celebrities were more involved in finding and interpreting some of the documents.  

When the list of celebrities for this past season was announced, I was so excited!  There in the list was the name Ashley Judd!  Now, I do like Ashley Judd, but being a fan was not the reason for my excitement.  I was anxious for her episode because I was hoping that the focus would be on the Judd side of her family.

Ashley's Judd ancestors were in Ashland, Kentucky which is about 75 miles east of Maysville, Kentucky, where my Judd ancestors lived in the 1800's.  My Daniel Judd, who was born about 1772 in Harford County, Maryland was in the Mason County, Kentucky area early enough to be married there in 1796 to Rachel Nower, whose family had also traveled from Harford County.   Surely there was some connection between my Judds and Ashley's Judds.

Of course, as we now know, the show did not focus on her Judd ancestors and while I enjoyed her search for her father's roots, I was a bit disappointed.  Spurred on by Ashley's remark that she already knew all about the Judd side of her family, and by my hope of finding a connection, I turned to the Internet to see if there was a Judd pedigree online.  

I did find one, but as luck would have it, there is no immediate or apparent connection.  Her Judd family came to Kentucky from Connecticut, not Maryland and I had not heard of any of her family members.  However, this discovery brought to mind questions that can now, hopefully, guide my Judd research.

I know that Daniel's father was William and his mother was Ann Pogue.  William was born about 1737 in St. George Parish, Harford County, Maryland, and he died across the river from Kentucky, in Clermont County, Ohio.  Ann was born about 1742, but I do not know where.  William's father was another Daniel; his mother was Sarah Fowler.  While Sarah was born in the Bush River area of Maryland in 1704, I have no knowledge of Daniel's place or year of birth.  He and Sarah were married in St. George's Parish about 1736.  This information leads to these questions -

1.  Maybe I need to investigate some of the Connecticut Judd families.  Could my earliest Daniel have 

     come to Maryland from Connecticut?  If so, why?

2.  What were the geographical boundaries of the area during the early 1700's?  Could this be part of the 

     answer?

3.  What are the variations of the name Judd that might have been the "real" name of my family?  Could 

     it be that I am looking at the "wrong" name?

4.  I have found evidence of a Michael Judd in Baltimore during the 1700's, yet no connection between 

     him and my Judd family.  Could looking into this Michael's family bring me any answers to my Judd 

    questions?

5.  Finding information from that time is difficult.  I am nowhere near the Maryland area.  What 

     resources are available to me?

6.  For what reasons would families travel to that area of Kentucky from Maryland?  Or from 

     Connecticut?  Did my William Judd receive Ohio land for Revolutionary War service and did his son 

     just happen to go to Kentucky?  Daniel would have been in his late teens when he left Maryland.  

     Did he go with his father to Ohio or did he follow the Nower's to Kentucky?   

These are just some of the questions that are floating around in my head for further research.  Of course, since I promised myself that I would finish the task of cleaning up my source list in Reunion 9, I will have to wait before actually looking for answers.  I have found that this is actually a good thing.  This way, I am forced to just sit back, rethink, analyze, and when I am ready, maybe I will research smarter and more efficiently.  

Spring Cleaning My Source List

What a mess!  I knew it was a mess and, up until now, I have just ignored it.  No longer!  I have finally tackled the long boring job of going through my source list in Reunion 9 and setting it straight!

How did it get to be such a mess?  I have death certificates linked to people who are not even related to the named person!  Multiple families, living in numerous locations, are all sourced to the same census record!  I even found sources that not one person in my huge database is even linked to!  Like I said, "What a mess!"

Part of the problem stems from the fact that when I began this genealogy journey many, many years ago, I had no idea how to really cite my sources.  They were hit and miss; never following any one format.  Of course, as I accumulated more and more paper and became better read in the subject of sourcing documents, I realized what a mistake I had made.  I vowed to be better organized and, even went as far as to purchase the software, Clooz, which helped, but was a bother to use.  Maybe it is better now, but it required entering all the data that I had already entered into my Family Tree Maker software which I was using at the time.  Where was the fun in that?  However, I diligently did it and was much better organized.  Until...I switched to RootsMagic.

RootsMagic was great!  It has a source wizard that helped me source all my documents, census data, and other information that was piling up faster than I could file it.  I said, "good bye" to Clooz, and hello to the wizard.  I felt pretty good about my sources as I used RootsMagic.  Until...I got my Mac a year ago.

Unfortunately, RootsMagic wouldn't run on my Mac so I reluctantly gave it up for Reunion 9.  I really like Reunion 9!  Like RootsMagic, Reunion 9 helps me cite my sources correctly, but there was just one huge problem.  When I made the GEDCOM file to transfer all my data from RootsMagic to Reunion 9, my sources did not transfer so well.  Fields that I had used in RootsMagic weren't available in Reunion 9 so some of the end notes in my new reports were, shall we say, a bit strange.  Then, at times, when I checked my sources to see where I had found certain pieces of information, I ended up mystified at what I found. 

What did I do?  I ignored it.  The huge task of fixing everything just didn't sound as fun as researching and discovering new family members.  I fixed things as I ran across them, and of course, I sourced new information correctly but what I didn't find, wasn't hurting me.  So, why, do you ask, have I finally decided to sit down and actually do this monumental source list spring cleaning?  Well, you see, our Internet service went out the other day.  I couldn't research.  Ancestry.com, Family Search, Newspaper Archive, all my favorite cyberspace haunts were all out of reach.  Here, I had set aside a couple of hours to spend working on my family history and was thwarted.  I guess I could have cleaned out a closet or two, but instead, decided to do what I have known for a long time needed to be done.  I opened Reunion 9, clicked on the Sources button and started with Source Number 1.  It's not as bad as it seemed and I still have a long way to go, but I am feeling quite satisfied with myself.   I just hope I don't break the promise I made to myself about not researching until the task is finished.  We shall see!