The threads

It wasn’t a breakthrough for me, although it was another justification for all the hours of abstracting I’ve done with pen or typewriter or computer in hand. All the entries of the same surname in the same county. Hour after hour of tedious recording. All in the hopes of finding some thread tying these people into my David SCOTT, Sr., or his family (whoever they turn out to be).

One of the SCOTT entries did turn out to help another researcher. Yippee! No, really, yippee! How grand that there was a clue that assisted him.

Last night it was a COLLINS, thanks to David’s wife’s being a COLLINS. An 1815 land record in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, tied a researcher back to her Mifflin County roots through Crawford County, Pennsylvania, to her Henry COLLINS who died in 1793!

True, others have contributed to my understanding through bits and pieces of their preserved notes. But when will there be that golden SCOTT thread that will weave all the SCOTTs and COLLINSes and ROBSONs and HENDERSONs and [VAN] SWEARINGENs and PATTERSONs and BRICEs and GRAYs into some comprehensible tapestry?

In the meantime, let last night serve as a reminder that we need to be looking everywhere......no, EVERYWHERE...... for clues, no matter how minute, no matter how remote, no matter how illogical, no matter how unlikely. As long as life endures and eyes see and hands write and brains cogitate, we must pluck the pieces from whatever source is presented.

It just might be that there are other less tangible beings who are trying to guide us to the end of the requisite thread. May we listen and work and trust them.