A probate will proved Renty Thompson’s family lived on Taylor-owned Alabama land.

Evidence

With that document I can place my family in the small rural community of Mount Meigs on Taylor-owned land and with Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s family. Carey found a cemetery record for Jesse Peter Taylor, who was born in South Carolina and migrated to Mount Meigs, where he died and was buried. I knew from Denise Hardin that Jesse was Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s brother—and Carey placed him in Mount Meigs. Denise had mentioned Jesse Taylor four years earlier when we spoke, but he did not fit into the puzzle that was my family—until now. One of the things I learned with genealogy is that you will come across clues that might not make sense in the moment of discovery—but will one day. Suddenly, four years later, they did. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 807

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘clues that don’t fit until later’ craft lesson echoes how historians read archives backward — connects to the reader’s own genealogical/archival work.