The Joshua Parker lineage on New Family Search is so
confusing! All the Joshua’s are merged
together and the only documentation presented is from those who determined the
connections in New York.
Joshua Parker from Genesse County, New York is also
included in this merging. Research was
done in LeRoy, Genesee County, New York sometime before 1992 and it was
determined “this” Joshua was not my lineage.
That needs to be done again and the documentation attached to his
family.
Massachusetts often have wonderful town records on
microfilm that can be accessed to find families. How our Joshua got connected to the
Massachusetts family is a mystery, but if the documentation can be produced for
that family it would certainly clear up the discrepancy.
Professional Researchers often have to document
lines to prove they are not the correct ones. This is especially helpful with
“preponderance of evidence” for DAR lineage proof.
Researching two Parker lines was done for one
lecture to show how “folklore” can often get confused with fact. It was proved
that Butch Cassidy was not directly related to our Parker family.
My Journey:
1960-1970
I was introduced to genealogy by my husband’s
grandmother, Malinda Wells from Salmon, Idaho.
She had several legal sized Books of Remembrance compiled, hand-written
or typed and creased after the page was folded to fit a standard manual
typewriter. My heart was touched.
In 1966 our little family moved to Salt Lake City
and compiling our own Books of Remembrance was my primary project. The Genealogical Society in the old
Montgomery Ward building on Main Street had member submitted Archive Sheets in
large binders. Every month my two little
ones and I would trudge to the library as they offered babysitting in the
basement.
The Xerox copier had just been invented and made
available at the library for five cents a copy. My husband’s lines were
extensive and his book became large quickly.
My Parker/Zachrisson lines had limited information. Most of the work was
compiled in the early 1900’s. The
sources of information noted on the sheets were often books or personal
knowledge.
Since there were so many LDS descendants from Joshua
and Drucilla Parker, my decision was to work on the Beauvais because we were
few in numbers. So during the 1960-1980
period while raising children, etc., I
wrote letters, obtained documents and discovered the Beauvais history.
In the 1970’s the Church greatly expanded the
Genealogical Library providing cabinets and cabinets of microfilm to pour over.
It was tedious work with very few indexes to guide the researcher. You really had to be very lucky, or guided by
the Spirit to find the information. By
1972 we lived in San Diego, CA and much time was spent in the LDS Genealogical
Library there and public libraries that had very small genealogical
sections.
1980-1990
By 1980 we were in Arvada, CO, but an opportunity
came to attend the World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City. At that time they showed a microfiche and all
were amazed that a whole book could be transferred to his card and we could use
a reader to search it---beats having your head in a reader with a very tired
arm from reeling the film. They also
told us that some day we would be able to do our genealogy research from our
homes. How prophetic was that! The computer age was upon us.
1980’s
By the 1980’s we were happily printing copies of
records from microfilm and microfiche.
Classes were offered in our stakes and libraries. By 1981 we were in Lubbock, TX and we lived
there ten years. After teaching classes,
doing Extraction for the Church and helping others in our various places of
residences my confidence grew.
Our children were leaving the nest and it was time
for me to decide what to be when I grew up.
Being an Institute Secretary, students attending Texas Tech. University
inspired me. A course of study was a
hard decision – music, art, writing,
etc, but my first love was research. So
began my journey to become an Accredited Genealogist with the Genealogical
Library in Salt Lake City. The man in
charge of that testing was Jimmy Parker --- funny now to recall that.
My summers at BYU included being taught by the best
researchers of the day. They emphasized
documentation and much of my class work was based on finding documents and
proving data. Since LDS Church records
were part of my study, the Parker family became my focus. We were to verify the old Archive Records as
described in the previous 1960-1970 section of this letter. I could not find the references indicated on
the Parker sheet, so it was time to look for the “personal knowledge.” Howard
Erickson was contacted. He was helpful
with pictures and some of the history of Charles Henry Parker family. The oldest relatives of his were located and
interviewed, but they had little knowledge of Joshua and Drusilla Parker.
When I began studying the ward records of the
families and followed up with obituaries, death records, marriage records and
census records, I came to the conclusion the Massachusetts origin was not
correct. All the records pointed to the
New York Joshua Parker. There was no
documentation to prove otherwise.
In 1987 I received my Associate Degree in Genealogy,
passed my Mid-Western States Accreditation exams at the Library and began
taking clients.
1990’s
We lived in Southern California by 1992, I was very
active in my occupation and the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Sharon C and I found each other, maybe through Barbara G, and she
shared with me her research on the Parker’s in New York and New Jersey. It fit my conclusions from my college days.
Sharon put me in touch with Robert Smith and his research was on going and
accurate. I felt this research was in
good hands.
By the latter 1990s my work was writing, lecturing
and teaching classes. We had moved to
Michigan and then back to Texas by 1999 and I slowly quit taking clients,
although Accreditation qualification was continued.
2000’s
In 2004 the Beauvais Book was finished and full-time
care for my aunt and mother began..
Sometime in the past five or six years Greg Parker
in Oklahoma sent me packet of information concerning DNA testing and the
possible connection of the Virginia Parker family to the New York Parker
family. Having attended many of the DNA
classes at LDS and National Genealogical Conferences, this was not foreign to
me. My husband, was part of a
grand DNA project at BYU that included many Wells’ lines. It was very helpful in determining who
connected where, solving many mysteries.
Thank you for the gathering of the Joshua and
Drusilla Parker descendants this month.
I was in the parking lot the first day and a woman asked me if I was
Diann Wells. “Yes I am,“I replied to
Sharon Christensen. We had never personally
met. During the dinner I got up to get
some napkins off the head table and a man asked if I was Diann Wells. “Yes, I am,” I said to Robert Smith, again we
had never met. The next day I spoke with
Greg Parker. It was good to put faces
with those good researchers.
