Genealogical & Historical Research

This webpage gives links to some of my projects that investigate certain early families of European or African descent who lived in southeastern North America. Although my desire to learn more details of these families' background originally motivated this work, in several cases this led to research into the local history of the regions in which they lived. The specific locations studied range from Colonial Virginia of the 1600s southward along the Atlantic seaboard to the Carolinas and Georgia in the 1700s, and then westward into the "Old Southwest," the vast area that became the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Although this includes an expansive geographical region, beginning in the 1820s, all the families studied here converged upon the Ouachita Valley of northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas, and specifically, to the area that in March 1839 became Union Parish, Louisiana.