Wake Wednesday - Finding Green Alford's Parents

If you have the surnames - Alford, Liles, and High - in your family lines, you will want to check out Eureka: Proving an Ancestor in Wake County, N.C. by Lodwick Houston Alford describing his efforts to discover and prove the parents of Green Alford, b.1787 near Wakefield, Wake County (Wake Treasures, vol.10, nbr. 2, p. 17).

I read his account hoping for a workflow strategy or inspiration to solve my own elusive ancestor. His efforts included:

disambiguating between two similarly named men
proving/disproving the various family stories passed down for generations
working with several local history librarians in the area
using the Bastardy Bond abstracted records* published in the Wake Treasures
calling in another set of eyes when it seemed all possible lines of research had been exhausted

The sum of all these efforts led to his success.

This was a compelling report, one I could not stop reading even though it was NMF (not my family). He has given me some ideas to approach my mystery from other angles in the future. Definitely worth a read whether you are Alford or not.

Bastardy bonds listed by time frame and location in journal subject index on page 1.

Journal access is a great perk* of your Wake County Genealogical Society membership and a handy tool for those researching in Wake County remotely. Members have 24/7 access to the Journal. With 20 plus years of content, you will likely find the surnames and place names you are researching.

*Journal access is currently free for all to view.

Visit the Journal subject index here.

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Wake Wednesday - Slave Narratives in the Wake Treasures Journal Archive

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