-
Chasing Shapeshifters: John W. Magill
Fragments of a Family Story About a year ago, I began creating folders for individual family members, gathering whatever evidence surfaced as my research intensified. What started in 2023 as a vague, single folder—with a Word document summarizing what I thought was my family tree—quickly unraveled. That document went through multiple rewrites, additions, and hard
4 min read
-
What the Record Keeps: Following Eliza Huguenin Thomas Magill
The Names That Return In my previous post on “Cousin Rosa,” I introduced her as the daughter of Eliza Huguenin Thomas and John W. Magill. As I have noted in earlier writings, tracing female ancestors often requires the application of different guideposts than those typically employed for men. It is precisely this challenge that made
4 min read
-
Unraveling Cousin Rosa: A Genealogical Puzzle
Tracing family history often feels like assembling a puzzle with missing pieces—and sometimes a few pieces seem to belong to an entirely different puzzle set. One of the most elusive figures in my ancestral search is Eliza Huguenin Thomas Magill, the eldest sister of my second great-grandfather, Edward Jonathan Thomas. Like her sister, Mary Jane
4 min read
-
The Life and Shadows of Mary Jane Thomas Gaden: A Story Waiting to Be Told
If I were a fiction writer, I’d already have a novel on my hands. This story has all the elements: a strong protagonist, mystery, wealth, betrayal, spiritualism, social reform, crime, and ruin. But it’s not fiction—it’s the real-life story of my 2nd great-aunt, Mary Jane Thomas Gaden. And I’m piecing it together, fragment by fragment,
4 min read
-
Follow the Women
Where I started over two years ago in genealogy research and where I am now are two very different places. My skill set for this work has steadily progressed. Still, I catch myself in frustration when I try to locate evidence of my female ancestors. When I spent a month in August of 2024 in
4 min read
-
Harris Neck
The name “Harris Neck” first entered my consciousness when I was a young girl visiting my grandmother. It was mentioned during trips near Savannah until her passing in 2009. Yet, as far as I can recall, I never set foot on the land of Harris Neck. Still, it had been a part of my identity
4 min read