Filling in the names and dates ....

I just realized I haven't posted anything since March!  It's not that I haven't been digging, I just haven't really come across anything new that seemed post-worthy.  Pretty much every evening before I go to bed I get out my laptop and log on to ancestry, go through some censuses or cemetery listings or something and fill in some names and dates in my tree.  I link up whoever I can and fill in spouses' family names, which often leads me way off into the great beyond where I'm filling in the names and dates of people I'm scarcely even related to at all. 

It's interesting, though, that quite often I get off on some random branch of an inlaw's family tree and discover that it links up again with other people in my own tree at other points.  It makes sense that this would be ... in a small community with large families inevitably they're all intermarried with each other at some point over the years.  

I was thinking the other day how when I was a kid and when people heard I was a Gray they'd ask if I was related to this Gray or that Gray and I'd always say no, we were the Grays from Plymouth, not those other Grays.  After all the work I've done in the past few years I know now that more likely than not I was probably related to all of those other Grays.  Not to mention the Goodwins, Hemeons, Eldridges, and numerous other family names that were in the pot.  

This week I've been doing some research into the Moultons.  Capt Jesse's wife Sarah was a Moulton, of Wells Moulton and Kezia Goodwin (there's those Goodwins again!).  They were also called Morton in some parts over the years, which of course doesn't confuse things at all ...

There were a few Moulton families around in the area with Capt Jesse so I'm linking up the names, working on figuring out where they all came from and if they are from separate Moulton clans or if they all come from the same group at some point.  

I'm also still focusing on unusual names, like with Watson.  Though I didn't get very far with that theory ... yet.  Some names were carried down from the spouse's family, which does help to figure out who belonged to whom sometimes.  It's interesting how often a name is repeated in the same family ... like the EXACT same family.  I mean like in a case like Rebecca Elizabeth Moulton and Joseph Nelson Kinney.  They had a son, Charles, born 1862 who died in 1864.  So then they had another son in 1865 and named him Charles, too.  I guess they figured they liked the name and since it didn't "take" the first time, they'd give it another go.  Seems odd now, I can't see people nowadays giving a child the same name of its deceased brother or sister, but I've seen it fairly often in the past.

Anyhow, I'll try not to be so neglectful of my postings like I have been lately.  The search continues ...