Any tips, hints, or ideas?

Question

I have been working very hard in order to solve the mystery of who my 4th great grandfather [[Stults-209|James Stults]]' parents were, mainly focusing on finding who his father was.

I have found Ancestry DNA matches for my Uncle to descendants of [[Stultz-250|Adam Stults]] & wife Mary Gravely. So I am fairly sure that James's father has to be either their son Abner or son Joseph.

I have been leaning towards Joseph he married in Tennessee at the age of 32, since he was 32 I have a good feeling he had been married at least once before.... but have been unable to prove this yet.

I have had no success in finding a birth or death record for James, I doubt there ever was a birth record, and believe his death record was destroyed since he died in a twice burned county.

Anyway my question is does anyone have any ideas, hints, tips, or tricks that they may want to share for places or records or ways I might be able to find out who James's parents are or find proof for a earlier marriage for [[Stultz-142|Joseph]]?

Comments

I don’t have an answer, Stephanie, but feel your Tennessee pain! I’ve got some of those there!

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The only thing I know to do would be to start delving into Henry County, looking for any record repositories that may not be on line, possibly because of copyright.    I did find one book of marriage banns that is not fully on line because of copyright.    And a Bassett historical society that seems to have collections covering Henry County that are also not online.

Start with the family search page for the county and work out from there...

Good Luck with your digging !

Also, I would not ignore looking for Adam's two brothers that supposedly emigrated with him, and Mary Gravely's parents.   Your Uncle sharing DNA with their descendants still doesn't really tell you what the exact relationship is without a bit more paper trail.

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I've had some luck looking at family members: siblings have the same parents, spouses and their families often share details about the family that they married into.  I'm with Tina, don't give up!

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I haven't be able to even positively identify not one of his siblings

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I know it's frustrating, but look on the bright side, at least he isn't named Smith...  

This is the book I found.

https://books.google.com/books?id=AlQNVXx2Y5sC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Sometimes it helps to switch directions. I wonder if you can discover where in Virginia there were Stults families around 1798? Which of those families had children the right age?  Did any of those families - or those children - move to Tennessee? Were any named James?

Answer 1

Think about things they may have done, clubs, schools, hobbies, work, family papers and live relatives, friends, religions, military service, town papers, find-a-grave, sometimes names are misspelled too so consider everything. Just keep doing detective work and something turns up.