If you really want to stretch those old brain cells and learn a different way to think about family, enroll in Carolyn Earle Billingsley’s class, Kinship Theory & Genealogy: Part I, available online from Akamai University. It’s a 16-week college class. You start on your own timetable, but once you start you have only 16 weeks to finish. With everything else I’ve got going on, I have to run just to stay in place. Right now I’m the only one in class so I have Carolyn’s undivided attention [except for her 10-day cruise to Alaska-she really needed to rest].

My research project focuses on one of the five interrelated founders of the City of Salina Kansas. But I’ve had to research all the rest to make my case about this kinship group migrating to the same places [not all at the same time--chain migration] and settling in close proximity to each other. Individually they came from Ayrshire and Renfrewshire on the southwest coast of Scotland to Randolph County Illinois, thence to Lawrence, Kansas Territory. From there they moved to Salina KS as a group, then split up again as two families moved further south into McPherson County.

I chose this kinship group because I’ve been working on them for the last 30 years as one of the unofficial historians of Salina. Also I’ve where most of their records are. Otherwise I’d had to move to Arkansas for 4 months to access family records not in my file cabinets.

Y’all come join the fun!