Pity Me... Pairing Pears!

The photographs have taken over my life. I've become obsessed with identifying the people in them. I'm not concentrating on the ones that have no identification... no, I'm obsessed with the one's that do. In other words, I'm trying to Pair Pears! 

It's crazy because they are all Callaways. But which branch and how many generations removed? The only way to answer these questions is to spider-out. What I mean is I have to spin out the genealogy web to included descendants of descendants. The results look more like a snow flake than a web... actually it looks for like a contagion epidemic map from the CDC. 

The CDC's basic indexing method starts with zero patient. In this case, I'm starting with Jonathan Hosea Callaway. That's pretty far back but photographs became available in the 1820s and 30s. To be thorough, that's why I'm starting with him. He's indexed as C-01.

Then I have list out his offsprings, then each offsprings's offsprings, continuing until I reach the 5th generation.  Do you know how many people that is?! I don't, but it looks like I'm going to find out. The whole idea of indexing aunts, uncles, 1st cousins, 2nd cousins... just makes my head hurt. 

But it's already paying off. Below is a picture (I'm pretty sure) of Edward B. Callaway, 6th offspring of John Hansford Callaway.

 

The thing about doing this is that you don't collect your evidence all at once. New evidence may come forth later, either a month or years. So conclusions reached now may need to be re-evaluated and changed later. Unlike the 10 Commandments, history isn't set in stone. So if you're doing genealogy or looking for answers here, remember that those answers can always change.