Genealogy

Our genealogy is constantly evolving, increased record availability in France, new AI generated search methods for un-indexed legal records like deeds, probate, etc.  The catalog is growing and we are able to attach primary source records to persons in the Chastain lineages.  DNA is providing data and filling gaps where records do not exist.  So the search continues, confirmations, corrections, additions, the quest to get it right, make it right.  The official lineage narrative as developed by Chastain, Chasteen, etc., researchers over the years for the early generations is linked in the right column. Notice both here and in the more detailed lineages in the Member's Section that these lineages often do not follow along with the "trees" on Ancestry, Family Search, or WikiTree.  For example, there's no other names for Pierre, no James, no Louis, just his baptized name, just the name he used in known documents...his marriage, his children's baptisms, his will... Pierre Chastain.  No documentation has surfaced that he used or had any other given names. No prefixes or suffixes, MD is not attached, we have no record of him having received a Doctor of Medicine from any university.  Pierre was trained as a surgeon, "chirurgien", and the profession was not exactly the same as that of a present day physician.    All of that to say, an effort to be nit-picky with source material.  If there isn't a source, then it's not recorded as an identifier, an event, or an attribute.  If something is "thought" about an event or identifier, it's in the notes and hopefully with a qualified reason.  Chastain genealogy is still attempting to overcome some earlier, now known to be, erroneous information about our lineages.  See the two "spurious genealogy" articles linked in right column. Now, with online trees and copy and paste, some of the same material has resurfaced.  Also, the same name syndrome has taken us back some.  One John confused with another John, one James created from two, one Peter divided into two Peters.  A good amount of errata and addenda to our previously published works is compounding, new additions like Pierre's firstborn, daughter Anne and the possibility that she is the traditional wife of Claude Philippe de Richbourg.  The probability of Peter Chastain, Jr.'s wife being Mildred Archer is fading.  Archer Chastain being recorded once in a 20 or more year span while the name Archer Christian appears yearly on Buckingham tithe and tax lists.  Two of the daughters assigned to Peter Chastain, Jr. are speculative at best and maybe just wishful thinking.   The thousands of persons recorded in the Chastain database, those entered into the published works of PCFA are the work of hundreds of researchers over the years.  This was never the work of a single "genealogist" and still isn't.  The catalog is an effort of numerous compilers and family genealogical researchers collaborating their research findings. Please let us know of your research, primary source documents, your family stories, photos, etc.  Join us to compile down to the present and as far back in history as the records and science will take us!