A fellow descendant’s letter outpaced credentialed experts in genealogical yield.

Evidence

I was stunned. I had been interviewing historians and working with a world-renowned genealogist, and in one interchange this total stranger gave me more useful information than anyone had in all my years of searching. It was as if she already knew my story and so where to look for clues. There was so much information to process in that letter: To begin, she had found a Taylor descendant, and had already spoken with him! This was major news, as was the news that the Taylors’ dynasty stretched into Mississippi and Alabama. I knew that they lived in these states but did not know, until this moment, that the Taylors had plantations there. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 403

Categorization

• CANDY: A pleasing irony: an informal letter beat professional researchers.