Discovering a Probable Family Branch through Cluster Research

As we embark on our research journeys, we tend to be very focused on our target research subject(s), families or events. We establish our research question and move forward to gather as much information as we can from all varieties of sources. 

What we sometimes overlook are the individuals and families that appear in sources relevant to our targeted search who appear as neighbors in census schedules, witnesses or sureties on marriage records, informants on death records, and associates documented in county court and probate records. 

It is most advantageous to “widen our net” as we research, to study potential extended family, neighbors and associates. These groups represent our ancestor’s cluster. We must expand our search activity to investigate potential family and associates as diligently as we research our direct and known family lines. 

Elizabeth Shown Mills calls this the FAN club – friends, associates and neighbors. 

Cluster research strategy involves investigating people who lived close to our families, engaged in business transactions with them, stood as witnesses or informants for them for marriages, estate proceedings and death certificates. 

We will explore a case study demonstrating cluster research.

Denyce Porter Peyton is a genealogist with almost 30 years’ experience, including 20 years as a professional. Her specialties are African Americans, research methodologies, evidence analysis and nineteenth/twentieth century investigations. Denyce lectures on diverse genealogical topics. She holds completion certificates from several genealogy institutes and workshops. 

She served as Project Director for the Reckoning, Inc, Kentucky U.S. Colored Troops research project and continues as a volunteer researcher. Denyce recently joined the board of Reckoning, Inc. 

She is a member of the African American Genealogy Group of Kentucky (AAGGKY), Afro- American Historical and Genealogical Society, National Genealogical Society, Association for Professional Genealogists, Ohio Genealogical Society, Kentucky Historical and Genealogical Societies, and Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage. 

Denyce has ancestral roots from Henderson County, Kentucky, on her paternal side.