Methodology Monday with who visited whom

This month's morsel for the Transitional Genealogists Study Group to read and discuss on line is an article by Victor Dunn from the September 2005 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (free download for NGS members): "Social News as a Clue to Ancestry: Hester (nee Rogers) Cunningham of Virginia and West Virginia."

When pretty much all else failed, two little words in an humble and somewhat erroneous unindexed social note in the 29 August 1885 Martinsburg (WV) Independent provided the clue that enabled Dunn to identify Hester's parents: "Miss Mary Kyle, of Winchester, is visiting her sister, Mrs. J. B. Cunningham." As Dunn writes, for genealogist on such a cold trail, no source is too obscure, no record too hard to read, no detail too small to follow up.