My journey to find a document my Jenkins line continues. Now that I have established the line back to Joseph Jenkins through both DNA and genealogy, it's time to set my goal on finding our immigrating Jenkins ancestor.
We are now in the time period of the late 1700's and very early 1800's in Lincoln County, NC. It was important to learn the layout of the land in this time period in order to establish what count(ies) I need to look at for research. Looking at a map of 1790 for North Carolina one can see that Lincoln County included a very large area in comparison to an 1850 map of North Carolina. By 1850 it's clear that Lincoln County was then split into about three counties that now include Catwaba, Lincoln, and Gaston counties.
At this point in history, I can no longer use census records to establish family groupings. The best record in this time period for establishing who is related to whom are wills and probates. Knowing that my Jenkins were in Lincoln County, NC I'm going to expand my will research to the above three counties and look at all wills for all Jenkins in those three counties. It will be a huge undertaking and time consuming. With each will I hope to establish family groups and then hopefully start linking those family groups together. At some point I hope they will build onto my tree.
In addition to researching Lincoln County Jenkins, I also have a new lead. I mentioned previously that I have a very strong Y-DNA connection that showed up our cousins my Big Y Block Tree as part of our line. There is also a private variant that needs to be unlocked that should help as well. The match turned out to be Robert Jenkins (dec'd). I've been working with his wife, and we have a well-documented line back from him to Caldwell, KY in the late 1700's to early 1800's. I will need to complete the same exercise for their line in KY as I will be doing for my line. I plan to keep moving back on both lines until I find our connection. I suspect that it may be another couple generations back before I find our connection. This lead is very promising and is the first that may help me break through and past my Joseph Jenkins.
