Communications - Mining Newspapers - More DNA, etc.

Sometimes searching previous ground can be productive.

While searching some old forums on rootsweb.com, found a very old post from a Nancy Payne. She is a distant cousin (ShirtTail Cousin? both descended from John Beard..) and she has done much research in the Greenbrier area and has about 25,000 names in her database. But most interesting, she has pictures of John Beard's headstone because he was buried on her grandfather's farm in Renick, plus many other photos. Waiting to hear more from her, this is very exciting because I have not been able to exactly locate where the original John Beard farm is near Renick (note John Beard settled in Renick, WV in about 1770!). And to get actual photos from that area...

There have also been multiple new hits on the DNA Testing Front. Am awaiting some other Beard lines to post their ancestry trees to see if we can make sense of all of this. However, one of the recent findings I have had is that I seem to be the only Beard who is descended from the Thomas Beard/Staunton line who has had their DNA tested, and has a clear lineage back to about 1700.

I have been mining a lot of old newspaper obituaries posted by Norman Alderman (etater.com) in Pocahontas County. He posted these on his web site in .PDF format, nicely sorted by the letter of the last name (and are searchable). These are being dutifully found, recorded and posted in the individual biographies available in wvbeard.com. These are useful, because they not only clarify with certainty dates and usually sons/daugthers and sometimes parents; but they also tell something about the person. I have started to organize the biographies so that some interesting facts can be found on the person on each page, to the immediate right of the born / died/ marriage dates.

Some examples:

http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/SamuelBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/ChristopherBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/SamuelChristopherBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JosephBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JohnJordanBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/HarryBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/MargaretBeard.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JosephSamuelMcNeel.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JamesAtleePrice.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/WilliamThomasPrice.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JamesWardPrice.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/NormanRandolphPrice.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/CalvinWellsPrice.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/EvalineAnvillaBeardRenick.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/ElizabethBeardPoage.htm
http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/WilliamThomasBeard.htm

Well, summer is over. The trip to West Virginia was very useful in April, and feel I have made a lot of progress on all of this, this last year. There are over 15,000 individuals in my database now, and the web pages for most of the individuals is growing as new information becomes available.

Alan