First of all, I owe a great debt to my grandfather Demus C. Kizer who in 1968 sparked my interest in genealogy by sharing his stories about growing up in rural Arkansas during the early 1900s.  I was 11 years old at the time, and was fascinated hearing about all of the different families and how they were connected.  I immediately started writing to my relatives, sent away for census records and Civil War pension files and have kept going ever since. My dear grandmother Ruth (Shambarger) Kizer (Demus's wife) was a great-great-granddaughter of Margaret "Peggy" (Kirtley) Head (#27).

Eventually I reached a roadblock.  I knew that Ruth's great-grandparents Willis R. Head and his wife Elizabeth B. (Harper) Head were married in Butts County, Georgia in 1829, but was unable to find either of their parents. Then in the late 1980s, when I was living near Fort Worth, Texas, I got in touch with Mary (Head) Ground of Fort Worth, a first-cousin of my grandmother. Mary had recently heard from another Head relative who found the family Bible of Willis and Elizabeth Head. It contained the family group of Willis Head's parents William and Peggy Head, who had migrated from Madison-Orange Counties in north-central Virginia to Elbert County in eastern Georgia in the 1790s. After that wonderful find, I met several others who were researching the genealogy of the Head family, who showed me that Peggy was a Kirtley and provided me with a good deal of the information that has gone into this Kirtley web page.

Most notably, I was rewarded by the significant prior research on the Head families of the southern United States done by John Harris "Jack" Watts and James R. Landrum. Jim Landrum and I corresponded regularly for several years (from about 1987 until 1991) and were able to identify a lot more branches of this family. Jim's tireless research (always meticulous, carefully documented, and well-organized) and innovative use of his personal computer inspired me greatly.  Dorothy (Bearden) Heaner (descendant of Margaret "Peggy" (Kirtley) Head (#27)), Doris (Miller) Bias (descendant of Lucretia (Kirtley) Miller (#28)), and a number of others also contributed significantly to my knowledge of my Kirtley ancestors and relatives.

The advent of the Internet and various online services like Prodigy and AOL has made a tremendous difference in helping researchers find each other, collaborate, and share information.  Steve Kirtley, Berdine Payne, Nina Scholtz, and other contributors to the dialogue on the Kirtley mailing list have helped to renew my interest in the Kirtley family (one of about 30 families I am currently working) and have graciously shared transcriptions of wills and other important information.

This Kirtley web page would not have been possible without the contribution of over a hundred other researchers over many years.  During my 30+ years of research, I have tried to carefully document the primary sources of each piece of information in my database in order to validate the extensive research done by myself and many others.  I continue to be amazed and gratified at the sense of teamwork displayed by other genealogists I have met.  Hopefully this compilation will help others now and in the future to carry on the work that has been done so far.
 

 Mark B. Arslan