On 16 May 1890, Arthur Bell bought a keg of beer from a saloon in Yorkville, Illinois. What happened next would forever change the fate of two families. This case study will demonstrate how to bring your family legends to life by adding historical, social, and cultural context. Numerous examples will help prove that researching your ancestors' friends, associates and neighbors (the FAN club) can reveal new clues and bring fresh points-of-view to old stories. Helpful and unique reference materials, including books and websites, will also be discussed.

Personal records and manuscripts about families which moved around, along with their neighbors are often elusive, but may hold hidden treasure for the persistent researcher. Discover the people with whom they worked, prayed, fought and married.

Our ancestral hometowns oftentimes house individuals with the same name. Whether you’re hunting for Elizabeth Warren in South Carolina or Hans Jensen in Norway, there are methods and techniques for flushing out the records and learning which prospective ancestor actually belongs in your tree.

How badly do you want to solve a research problem? How many hours and strategies do you consider reasonable? How wide a geographic swath do you consider doable? William Mills “just appeared” in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1816, signing a bond for his planned marriage. At no point in his life did he associate with any person of the surname Mills, except his wife and children. He died 1860–64, leaving no probate. Death registrations were mandatory, but none exists for him. Others have plugged him into an unconnected family by merging him with a totally different, same-named man. Triangulated Y-DNA tests by descendants of three separate sons place him in no Mills line anywhere on the globe. Instead, his Y-DNA is that of a totally different surname found widely across Virginia but not in the county where he emerged as a grown man. How can we break through this kind of brick wall?