While answering a query today that involved a branch that I had labeled as Missing when I completed my canvas of the 1870 US Census, I stumbled into a discovery that alluded me 10 years ago.

The person only had the name of their Grandfather, which is someone that didn’t appear in the Master Tree, so I set about researching it. With a name like Ryland Ashby Babb it was relatively easy to locate information on him and I set to work. About 3 generations back I found his connection into the Master Tree through what I had labeled as M034 (which is an old system I used to denote a tree where the link to one of the main trees was missing. This was the 34th of them and there are many more. I don’t normally talk about them unless someone steps forward with a query, which is what happened here.

I spent about 5 hours firming up the research and sources for Ryland and his descendants and ancestors connecting him to the Master Tree when the time was right. Still feeling a sense of loss because this tree was not united with its parent I then set about finding the proper link by comparing all 1100 known Descendants of the White Stags of Eastern Virginia/North Carolina with the 237 descendants of this M034 tree. There was zero overlap, but one thing stood out!

The Progenitor of this branch was John W. Babb of Nansemond, Virginia. Now this location is well known to me as the home of the Eastern Virginia Babb lines. I say lines because even though we have DNA tests that demonstrate the connections between the roughly 12 disparate trees, the paper trail is well short of where it should be to prove exact connections.

I debated on conducting yet another test of this nature, but it will tell me what I already know about them. They descend from this line and the DNA won’t prove how. So, I’ve replicated the same process first used by Jean A Sargent (my predecessor) of tagging them all under the same flag so as to keep them together in hopes a day will come that they can be properly united.

Note that this isn’t the system I have employed in the UK records. I’ve got a modern system that allows them to remain adjacent even when they aren’t connected. I won’t be changing the well established existing systems used in both Eastern Virginia and North Carolina Pedigrees because there are far too many supporting documents left by my predecessors that are filed by those older systems. Still I’m up for the task and am excited about the constant discoveries even after all these years and the now 35,000 people in our combined trees.

So without further delay let me introduce you to the descendants of John W. Babb of Nansemond, VA (1800-1882). John is connected at the top level of the Eastern Virginia Babb Pedigree under the entry marked simply as “Babb”.