Today, I begin with the next generation of my great-great-grandparents, and at the top of the brackets is my Quillin line. This generation on all of my lines has been the most difficult to document because of the census records. Before 1850, the families are listed with only the name of the head of households and a count of the other members in age brackets. Unless you can find a written will, land purchases, war pensions, etc., where names are listed with your ancestor, proof becomes dicey. In the south during the Civil War, many records were pillaged, burned or destroyed making it even more difficult to accurately trace your lineage. This is the generation where some of my brackets fall apart. With some of the families, however, there were historical societies that took up the cause to record information about the people of the communities. I have been fortunate to find a few of these historical books that have my family mentioned. And some of the families have a rich history recorded in a complete lineage book. Such is the case with my Quillin Clan.
I couldn't have been luckier than to find a book with a Library of Congress number that actually traces this line down all the way to Daddy, with my two older siblings listed. There is a generation in the late 1770's that researchers have taken two paths to get to the ancestor that migrated here in 1635 on a ship named The Thomas headed for the New World, but either way you turn the coin, you will arrive at Daniel Quillin whose father was a Teague Quillin, the man who braved the ocean to come to America and help settle this wild frontier.
It's quite a tale, and I'm excited to share my Quillin lineage all the way back to Ireland.
