Research Leads to Changes

As I was doing updates on my Ancestry.com family tree (there are a lot of my ancestors that 'grew' new leaves when the Sons of the American Revolution database was made available to Ancestry), I added information to my Yeagers and Cheeks/Chicks.  Whenever I get around the Yeager surname, I am again drawn into the debate about John (Piney Woods) Yeager [Johann Jager] and his ancestry - whether or not he is related to the Nicholas Jager (Yager/Yeager) who was one of the early Germanna Colony settlers.  (See Wednesday, February 9, 2011 post - John "Piney Woods" Yeager - the Confusion). 

(Who is a Germanna colonist? In 1713, forty-odd Germans left their homes in Nassau-Siegen expecting to mine silver in the New World.  In 1717, about eighty Germans left their homes in southwest Germany expecting to go to Pennsylvania - Nicholas Yager was one of these.  Neither of these groups fulfilled its expectations.  Instead, they became guardians of the frontier in Virginia and a vanguard in the westward expansion of English civilization on the North American continent.  How did this come about, especially when the Germans themselves had no expectations of serving in these capacities?  Follow the link if you want to read more about these colonists. )
 
I seem to spend days rereading all the research and posts on the North Carolina Rootsweb message board -  Betty Johnson, List Administrator - and the Yeager Rootsweb message board.  What I ended up concluding from the research this time was that I am still confused about John of Piney Woods' ancestry and I also have questions about whether the parents I have for my third great grandmother, Sarah Cheek Yeager, are correct.  There are even questions about the Estes family connection.  Wow!  You just get one branch figured out and looking good and one article or bit of information starts shaking the limbs and confusion sets in again.

So again I am detaching parents from the following individuals in my Family Tree Maker database:
1) Adam Yager (5th great grandfather - born abt 1700 in Virginia)
2) Richard Cheek/Chick (5th great grandfather - born 1725 in King & Queen Co, Virginia)
3) changed Richard Cheek/Chick's wife's name to her maiden name (Elizabeth Ferguson) instead of her married name (she had been married prior to Joseph Ryland and I had her parents listed as his parents)
4) Thomas Estes (5th great grandfather - born 1738 in Virginia.

 Thomas Estes

I will go through all the new records I've found and try to sort all this out again.  At least with FTM you can detach individuals without deleting them from your database, so if I determine that my first assumptions were correct I can re-attach them. I've only added about 100 new people to my database with all the new information and sources I've found - I now have 5,276 individuals in FTM.

So the next couple weeks will be spent filling out forms and checking and rechecking sources as I sort through all the information once again.  No one can say that genealogy is boring.