For the next several months, I expect that most of my effort will be happening "off-camera." Instead of spending my time doing research and compiling a (mostly) weekly report to post here on the blog, I will be putting my energy into the goal of assembling that research in book form.
As I'm doing that, I plan to reach out to as many of the distant cousins I've found as I can and invite them to come and learn about my work. That means that a lot (I hope!) of people will be visiting this site for the first time. If you are one of those people, please allow me to give you a brief tour.
Frequently Asked Questions
"What is 'Mightier Acorns' supposed to mean?"
In October 2014, I decided to create a website where I could share the family history research I was doing. As I explained in my first post here, "From Little Acorns Grow," the name Mighty Acorns came from the old adage, "Tall oaks from little acorns grow." I like the idea that anyone, however small and humble, has the potential to grow and to be mighty, and no matter how mighty we may become, we're all acorns on the same big tree. This blog was my second attempt to start up a family history site - and I had already used the name Mighty Acorns on that first attempt. So I named this site Mightier Acorns.
"My name isn't 'Callin' - so what does this have to do with my family?"
According to the original Callin Family History, James Callin came to the American colonies sometime before the Revolutionary War. He and his brother fought in the Revolution, and two of his sons eventually settled in Ohio between 1810 and 1820. Those two sons had 14 children between them - eight sons and six daughters.
When I was first starting out on this journey, I shared some of my research with one of my cousins - an actual First Cousin - and he said that it was neat, but "That's really more your family than it is mine." But in reality, every generation shares the same connection to the people in the previous generations. Biology is messy, so you may not be able to state accurately that "50% of your genes come from each parent," but your existence depends equally on each parent - and on their parents, and so on. The truth is, a 6th cousin who descended from several generations of women who happened to change surnames when they married has the same "amount" of connection to James Callin as I have.
So, if I have found you and your immediate family through several generations of female descent, changes of surname, or adoption, you are legitimately as much of a "Callin" as I am.
"Why do you have so many links and sites?"
Over the last six years, I've tried to attract interest in the work I'm doing from the people who I think would be most interested in it: the varied and far-flung group of distantly related people I address as "cousin"! As I see it, the challenge is to give a group of strangers who share a tiny bit of DNA a place to learn about their connections to each other and to make it as easy as possible for them to engage with the research I've done.
There are four main places where you can explore on your own, or reach out to me if you want to know more about our family connections:
1. This Blogger site -
If you're reading this post on a desktop computer, you should see a search bar labeled "Search This Blog" and a simple form to contact me labeled "Contact Form" - since you are alive, and I don't post information about living people, your best bet for finding what I've written about your branch of the family is to put the name of a deceased grandparent, parent, uncle, etc. into the Search and see what comes up.
If you are still lost, put your question into the Contact Form and I'll get that as message to my "mightieracorns" Gmail address. I will also see any comments you make at the bottom of any blog post on this site.
2. Facebook -
I'm easy to find on Facebook (there's only one Tad Callin, to the relief of many!) - if you send a friend request and/or a Messenger request, I'll see those. We have a public page called Mighier Acorns on Facebook, and a private group called Callin Family History. If you request to join the private group, you will be asked how you are related to the Callin family; I moderate those requests, so if you aren't sure how to answer, let me know that, too.
3. Twitter -
I created a @MightierAcorns Twitter presence for those who object to Facebook; I mainly use that to publicize this blog and to follow historians and genealogists who Tweet.
4. Ancestry -
This may seem obvious, but I have several public trees available on Ancestry.com; most of the posts on this blog are based on the work documented in the "Callin Family History - G.W. Callin 1911" tree.
You can explore some of the other places I have linked to over the years in the toolbar on the right side of this blog page. I have put some work into editing WikiTree, I support Wikipedia, and I've published a couple of books.
Speaking of "books" - what is going on with this Callin Family History?
Around 2015, I edited and re-published the 1911 Callin Family History that was compiled by my 3rd-great Uncle, George W. Callin. The copies that we had floating around were worn and they had a lot of hand-written notes penciled in the margins. As I found more and more distant cousins, there was a growing interest in getting more copies to more people.
(You will notice that I have links to Lulu.com and Amazon, where you can buy the hardcover or paperback copies of that book if you want them; you can also find a free PDF version in several places on the internet. I posted it in the Callin Family History group on Facebook, and it can be found through a handful of other Callin-related websites that I don't manage. I'd be happy to email a copy of the PDF to you if you ask me to. If you purchase a copy, the royalties go to me; I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about those sales figures - let's just say I'm not relying on that income to pay the bills!)
After publishing that book, I realized that we were sorely overdue for an update - more than a century had gone by, and I figured the ~65 names in the original book had probably grown by now. I decided to start the "Callin Family History - G.W. Callin 1911" tree with those 65 names and estimated that once I had waded through the Ancestry hints and verified Uncle George's research, I should have a respectable update to publish. The tree currently contains the names of 22,140 People, with 2,615 Photos, 1,375 Stories, and 85,909 Records attached to them.
Obviously, not all 22,140 People will be included in the final draft. About 10% of those People are direct descendants of James Callin; about twice that number are spouses and in-laws, not counting the siblings of the spouses. That very big number includes offshoots of the main family that I had to research in order to learn important details about the descendants of James Callin and their spouse.
Within the covers of my book, I plan to include all of the direct descendants of James Callin I can find, as well as their spouses and their spouses' parents. If the spouses' families intermarried with other branches of the Callin descendants, I'll include those connections as best as I can. This blog has become a sort of "rough draft" of what I want the book to be. If you follow the link to this page - Project: Revising the CFH - you can see in broad strokes what the table of contents will look like.
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As you explore, you'll see that I end every post with a section like this one. Please feel free to share this post or any of the contact info below with your close relatives - siblings, cousins, parents - anyone who might be interested in re-connecting with this side of your family.
"As always...
You can comment below (anonymous comments are usually not as helpful), or email "mightieracorns" at Gmail.com.
We have many ways to get in touch:
a Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/MightierAcorns/
a Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/MightierAcorns
a Ko-Fi cup - https://ko-fi.com/mightieracorns
...and if you prefer a private group, we still have the Callin Family History group on Facebook for "cousins only" (there will be a question about how you're related to the family before you can join).
Until next time... Happy Hunting!"
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