The Process

Methods of Synthesis

[NOTE: This section is the roughest of placeholders at this point.  Originally, I was going to use it to explain all of the wild guesses and assumptions reflected in our analysis of the data.  But we have been nailing down assumptions with actual facts so quickly that I now need to re-examine what I want to accomplish here.]
I began working on my Buckley family roots in 2002, as a commemoration of my father’s 100^th birthday – 43 years after he passed away.  During the course of my work, I quickly crossed paths with two other Buckleys of Cappawhite, Phil Buckley of California and Montana, and Bill Buckley of New York – both of whose families also left Cappawhite in the 19^th century.  My early work benefited enormously from the prior efforts of Phil and Bill, though none of our data seemed to link us together.  The challenge we faced in stitching together an integrated family tree was to find a way to glue scraps of information together.  THis section explains how this was done.

The goal then, is to develop a hypothetical family tree that best fits all of the information that is currently available.  The approach, in broad terms, was to start with what we currently know about the pieces of the different families in the area, then collect those pieces into groups that seemingly belong together, and then try to move the pieces around within each group – using indirect data, inferences, assumptions, and (where necessary) sheer guesses – until the pieces seem to align with one another in the most consistent and coherent way.  Surprisingly, given how little direct genealogical information we actually had at first, using this approach allowed us to assemble significant portions of a coherent family tree that enabled us to go out and research very narrow issues to fill in key gaps and to confirm the overall approach to the tree-building exercise. 

As the visitor to the site will see from these pages, this tree is stitched together from disparate pieces of data using primarily three tools.  The first of these is data from records (and reasonable inferences drawn from that data) gleaned from property records created in the area during this time: the 1826 Tithe Applotment (“TA”) records, and the 1851 Griffith’s Valuation (“GV”) records (together with the subsequent GV supplements); and the baptismal and marriage records (focusing both on the subjects and the witnesses).  The second tool was to be guided by the tradition of how children were named: the first son named for his paternal grandfather, the second for his maternal grandfather; the first daughter is named for her maternal grandmother, the second for her paternal grandmother.  This tradition provides only guidance, but it was very helpful additional factor.  The third tool was then to lay the fragments of data and branches for the tree on a template that shows different generations descending down through the 19^th century, to put the fragments in correct temporal relationship to one another.

Taken all together, the body of genealogical information, the property data, the naming tradition, and the various inferences and assumptions that glue all these pieces together produced the hypothetical tree that is found on this site.  Although there are undoubtedly many areas of the analysis and the resulting tree where we have gotten things wrong, we are satisfied that this is the best fit that now can be made with the information we currently have.  We will try to point out in the discussion of the various parts of the tree where we think there are significant weaknesses in the analysis, and we will be targeting those weaknesses for further research to either confirm or refute that portion of the model.  With each piece of significant, new information we can continue to revise the model to improve the fit of the pieces.  We think there will always be areas of the model that remain unconfirmed, but hopefully only on the margins.