Genealogical Glass Houses and Other Mudpuddles 

(Author's note: In family history and genealogy, we must always work as hard to prove ourselves right as wrong; They don't tell us that we will have to eat a little crow along the way...)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

Well, I've gone and done it now. I've gone and made the absolute worst genealogical mistake I ever could have. No, I haven't committed any of my usual genealogical blunders, heresies, or any of my other assorted faux pas; you know the ones, like when I start believing in a secondary source over a primary one, or pulling some nineteenth-century parlor act by jumping over a generation to connect the dots, or worse, trying to copy and paste an upload of my family tree into some kinda TikTok tutorial. Eeeewww.

Nah, what I did was way worse. You see, I hurried.

Yeah, yeah, I know. If there's one thing the genealogist (even a wannabe one like me) cannot, should not, and must never do, it's hurry. What can I say? I messed up. And now I've gotta "pay the piper" and admit my hubris and attempt to make amends for my foibles. Did I mention how vainglorious we genealogical types can be, especially us old farts? Ugh! Foolish boy. Slap me down, I say! Ten demerits.

It all started with my new friend, Paige. You see, I wanted to show her the best of my sleuthing skills. So I quickly dog-eared a page of my American Ancestors magazine for future reference and briefly set aside my issue of Mayflower Descendant. I then attacked her ancestry like the proverbial dog with a bone.

True enough, too, is that her ancestry has been a different course of action for me; based largely in the South, her family lines have been a new experience for this "L.A. Yankee" in the learning of names, places, and the geography of things. Ah! But what did I care? I smugly thought. After all, I've had years of practice at proving ancestral lines. Heck, I'd even identified two babies switched at birth. How hard could it be to help Paige out with some of her ancestry? After all, I was raised on Anderson's Great Migration series and had been schooled in the ways of Gary Boyd Roberts. I'd even hunted serial killer Mayflower ancestors alongside Chris Child. 

I mean, I've had years submitting Mayflower lineages, DAR lineages, and the whatnots to the Salem witches, so how could "I" go wrong? Yep, that's me, just your average everyday genealogical Wonderboy Big Shot.

Yeah, not.

Did I forget to mention that I have also had literal decades of being absolutely one hundred percent genealogically wrong? (Just ask my wife...)

However, I guess it was in the middle of all my self-aggrandizing that I did find what looked to be a really awesome new family line for Paige. It was a line that connected her to a dynamic duo of Revolutionary War patriots, the Revolutionary War husband and wife team of Joseph Babb and his wife, Mary (McCool) Babb. (DAR Patriot #A004175)  How "cool" is that? Further, all of this connected them (Paige and the RW couple) to a present-day line of one of the couple's enslaved descendants, a fellow known as Jesse Babb. Yes! This was rich! This would be an awesome tale and legacy for my new friend. And for a brief moment, yes, perhaps it was.

I based the line on Lucretia Catherine Babb (1826-1898), who was married to John Adams of Greenville County, South Carolina, and through their son James A. Adams. I mean, everything appeared to be in order; I had census records showing their household and their children. I had cemetery records for each. I even had a death certificate for their son, J. A. Adams, naming his father John, upon whom the line depended. It all seemed to fit together quite nicely and matched up very well with online family trees, which had posted much of the same proof. I mean, really, what more could there be to do? Still, I raced on, not paying attention to what I was doing. (Yeah, I can hear you guys now yelling, "Jeff, slow down!")

Above: Fourteen-year-old James A Adams in the 1870 U.S. Census for Greenville County, South Carolina, in the home of his parents, John Adams and Lucretia (Babb) Adams

And yes, I knew that "J.A.Adams" was "one and the same with "James A. Adams." I had a copy of the 1880 census showing the household of "James Adams" along with his baby girl "Lillie," upon whom the line also depended. I had Lillie's death certificate naming her father as "J.A. Adams." Yeah, I figured I had it all. All of these documents appeared to agree quite nicely. I mean, really, what could go wrong? What wasn't I seeing? 

            

So I let it sit, and I swam about in my glasshouse feeling pretty smug, thinking I'd solved this tale and brought forth a really cool story for Paige. Something nagged at me a bit, though. The "connection" I was looking for was a "Babb" connection. It was a connection that I didn't have. Yes, I had the earlier census record showing "John and Lucretia and son James A." This was consistent with the information I'd been able to glean about the Babb's and Lucretia's father, James Kellett Babb. Still, my mind raced, wondering if indeed all those other pieces truly fit together. 

I could feel in my bones that something wasn't right. I didn't have at least one piece connecting James A. Adams to his mother, Lucretia Babb. Eh, it was okay, right? I had all the other pieces...

It was about then that a very murky image emerged. It seemed to crawl out of that abyss that I like to call a genealogical muddpuddle. I could barely see it. The image was terrible! The indexing was all wrong! I'd barely noticed it before.

 Then I saw it. Mother's maiden name: "Babb."

Yeah, I was had. There was no way any of what I had previously gathered held water anymore.

The truth is that in my haste, I had blended the information of two men, both called "James A. Adams" and both the son of John. Both men were born in South Carolina in 1855 and both lived in Greenville County. The problem was, one's mother was a "Babb" and the other's was not. 

In my defense, if I had not ever found the murky image of "Babb" on the second certificate, I might never have realized my blunder. I might never have gone back and taken another look at the census records and seen that these two men, while sharing so many similarities actually lived ten miles apart. I was foolish. I was hasty. While I hadn't copy and pasted anything, I had done the next worst thing. I failed to double-check my own faulty research.

So there you have it. My great tale of genealogical confessions, of living in glass houses, and of sloshing through the mudpuddles of bad research. The only saving grace I might have in any of this was that I did attach a caveat for Paige that "none of it was yet proven." The only thing to be done now is to "come clean" and wash off some of that well-deserved mud. It's time for me to remind myself to work harder, smarter, and definitely not so fast. 

Hey, what can I say? The mud washes off, but the lesson remains: in genealogy, patience truly is the ultimate proof standard.

Please pass the crow.