I was originally seeking to verify the parentage of Reuben Kirkland born abt 1804 in South Carolina and dying about 1843 in Georgia. He was married to Delilah Hitson Shirley.
Numerous online trees included his parents were Reuben Kirkland Sr. and Sarah Mary Clarke. In a previous blog post I wrote about how DNA did not support this finding.
Then I found an online Bible showing Reuben Kirkland Sr.'s son was Reuben Kirkland married to Amy Branch. So now the paper trail was not supporting that claim either. Click to view Bible
I decided to take a DNA Research Like a Pro class with the Kirklands as my family.
In the process, I narrowed the search to only include matching the children to mother Eleanor Kirkland as she was shown in sources with the family. There was nothing to indicate that she was married to a John Kirkland.
The clustering indicated that there was a connection to Benjamin Moses Kirkland and Alice Odom. At this time I have not been able to verify this with a paper trail. Benjamin left a will and listed his children. None of them seem to fit with Eleanor as a wife.... it might be that their son Richard who died young was the husband of Eleanor. [Their first son was named Richard]- However this is only a guess at this point. Hoping to be able to find some more information on this possibility in the a future research project.
The DNA connections were not as clear as I would have hoped at the time. So it became a much more involved project. After receiving permission to use several potential DNA matches I was able to make view several different DNA descendants and look for common ancestors among them. The paper trail was also more throughly examined and documented. My conclusion at the time of this report was the Eleanor was the mother of John, Richard, Nancy, Mary and Reuben.
The full report is more than 75 pages long- Click to full report as shown in familysearch.org
The summary report Click to summary
Since that time I have found a deed where Eleanor deeds to her grandchildren, of her daughter Dolly. Some DNA matches have been found among the descendants of Dolly's children lending further support to her connection.
Deed for Eleanor to Dolly's children. Click to view deed
Any comments or questions are welcomed- I love working with others to help straighten out this family. familyhistmom@gmail.com
