I’m still working on the extended Lincoln lineage book, but I ran across a story of loss among the Lincoln family of Mills County in 1896.

Scarlet fever took three of George Washington Lincoln’s children in March of that year.

Read about the family’s bad week in March at Medium.

Whether they were created by marriage alliances or political arrangements, names were important legacies to medieval aristocratic English families. They laid claim to lands, castles, positions of prestige, and/or lordships, even more so than they laid claim to their own children.

Read more about Aristocratic Pendulum and Effects on Lineages and Names in GenTales.

On Medium I recently asked, Who was Cornelia Martin? And in answering that question, I found a good example of the type of loss suffered by families in 19th century America.

While working on an upcoming book on the Lincoln line of Windham, Connecticut, I found the children of Nathaniel Martin listed in his will. I was able to find his daughter Cornelia’s birth record, but then she’s gone.

I couldn’t find any other vital records, though her siblings’ fates were all well documented. But I did find a woman of the same name in an asylum in Vermont. Was that her?

New in GenTales on Medium, I offer a case study in carefully navigating family stories and anecdotal evidence. The myth of Pocahontas’ daughter Ka-okee has been the subject of debate for 20 years. Which is part of the problem. In 400 years of history, we only just now learn about a child? Read more in GenTales.