Well, I was glad stoning was no longer legal. :^D In that case, the path was along the lines you mentioned - wills and inventories registered on the eastern shore of Maryland. You are right: that was really exciting detective work.
***Have you gone back into the research since the DNA tests for family surnames have been prevalent in family societies***
Mairdie, I have been a compulsive researcher all my life. I spent about three years on that Dickinson project... have moved on to other things I guess. I lost my fascination for genealogy; for one thing, my mother - the active genealogist but unable to travel much - took my mountains of research and published much of it in the Virginia Genealogist Magazine -- without even mentioning my name! I understand: she had worked feverishly on that line for a long time and was well known in American Colonial research circles; she just got excited and published to get it all out in print. Still, it deflated my sails considerably.
>>it deflated my sails considerably
That’s heartbreaking! And it’s family so hard to deal with the understandable reaction. How frustrating!
I use my own genealogy tree to store all the historical research I do, and I’m always looking to connect trees to figure out who knew who and why. The profs I work with have never used genealogy and love having someone who will try to make those connections for them. I’ve currently got 24,748 individuals in the tree and I use it all the time. Makes history SO much more understandable to know that Alexander Hamilton is the husband of the 2nd cousin, once removed, of John Jay.