My Photographic Family Tree

I am working on collecting photographs of my direct line ancestors (though I wouldn't refuse collateral relatives either!). I have at least one picture of each of my parents and grandparents and of three of my great-grandparents. There are five great-grandparents left to go and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get those. I will keep trying, though! The black squares represent those great-grandparents that I do not have pictures of, but it appears that I missed putting the black squares for my paternal grandmother's parents. Oops, please forgive me, Granny. :)


I also have some of a few great-great-grandparents, but they are the parents of the great-grandparents that I do not have pictures of and it was going to take more brain power than I have at the moment to figure out the layout on that.

Have you ever created a photo family tree? Do you have it displayed in your home anywhere? Once I get better at laying it out and fill in the missing spots, I want to have my photographic family tree printed and framed. I kind of like the idea of these folks hanging around our home.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day. Remember to thank a veteran for his or her service to this country!

Old Newspapers: Rowland Reunion - Keowee Courier, 1899

Rowland Reunion, Keowee Courier 1899

Today I got an e-mail from a lady named Kelly with some information about my Rowland family line. It was a link to a newspaper article housed at the Library of Congress, part of their Chronicling America campaign. The following article was posted in the Keowee Courier, 13 July 1899. It is about a family reunion of the descendents of William Rowland and his wife the former Miss Flora Reese. 

Can you imagine having fifty-five grandchildren and thirty-five great-grandchildren? Wow! My paternal grandmother, known to me as Granny Gunter, was one of their great-granddaughters, but she wouldn't be born for another twenty-two years after this reunion. I can't imagine how many great-grandchildren they ultimately had.

I look forward to searching through the various newspapers that are part of the Chronicling America program. This might prove to be a real sledgehammer against some brick walls that I'm facing in my genealogical research.

These are on my immediate list of things to look for:

1. Obituary of Oliphant Williams and hopefully his cause of death.
2. Anything showing what happened to Emma Williams (daughter of Oliphant) after the 1900 census.
3. Wedding announcement for Julius Jared Pressley and Carrie Williams.
4. Articles about our Gunter, McClendon and Williams families in Edgefield, South Carolina.

Be sure to check out the Library of Congress site: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov to start knocking down some brick walls of your own!


Thank you, Kelly!



Citation:
Keowee courier. (Pickens Court House, S.C.), 13 July 1899. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026912/1899-07-13/ed-1/seq-3/

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013: A is for Alexander Abner Walker

I am working on my family tree, as most of you already know. Over the last few weeks, I have been able to reach farther both backwards and outwards. One of the discoveries over the last week or so has been the name of the grandfather of my great-great-grandfather.

Alexander Abner Walker was married to Eliza Ann Hollingsworth. Grandpa Walker was born 21 September 1803 in Virginia. He died 3 January 1862 in Edgefield County, South Carolina. My great-great-great-grandmother Carolina was his second oldest daughter.

Things to find out about Grandpa Walker:

---Where in Virginia he was born
---When and where he and Eliza were married
---Was he a soldier in the War Between the States
---What was his cause of death

Here is the path from me way on back to Alexander Abner Walker:

31 Days of Tree Climbing: Taking Care of Business

I feel like I'm significantly closer to winning the race that was begun many years ago when my aunt's husband came home to tell her that, while he was on his trip, he'd seen her cousin. She asked him which cousin, to which he replied "Elvis!" Yes, THE Elvis, King of Rock 'n' Roll.

When Aunt Mae told me about this, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I loved the idea of being related to my favorite singer. I have wondered for many years if we really were related to Elvis. Our family's closest surname is Pressley, one "s" too many. However, there are multiple occasions of spelling variance in many surnames over the years for varying reasons. So, saying that a Pressley is related to a Presley is not at all far-fetched.

Last night, I hit pay dirt. I found a family tree that traced Elvis back to his great-great-grandparents, Richard and Philedelphia Presley. My great-great-grandparents were Richard and Philadelphia Pressley. It turns out, varied spellings aside, that these are the same people. The locations were the same. The vital statistics (births and deaths) were the same. The names of the children were the same.

My great-great-grandparents are the great-great-grandparents of Elvis Presley. If I've calculated this properly, this means that we are third cousins.

Now, all that's left is the proving of it now that I have the name trail to follow. I find this very exciting!

31 Days of Tree Climbing: Common Ancestor

When our oldest daughter was ten years old, she was diagnosed with Marfan's Syndrome. In the course of appointments that are a part of such a diagnosis, my husband and our daughter visited with a geneticist. This geneticist determined that, somewhere along the line, my husband and I share a common ancestor.

We had always suspected that there might be a connection somewhere, especially since both of our paternal grandmothers had "Fowler" as their maiden names. The jury is still out on whether we are connected through a Fowler ancestor or not, but I have found a connection through another branch in our tree.

According to information available through Ancestry.com, both David and myself are very distant cousins to Button Gwinnett. Our common connection is further up the tree. Button Gwinnett's tenth great-grandfather, David's eighteenth great-grandpa, and my eighteenth great-grandpa are one and the same: Walter Devereaux. David and Button actually share a closer relationship through a grandson of Walter Devereaux, Simon Milbourne. Simon is Button's eighth great-grandfather and David's sixteenth great-grandfather and is a collateral relative, not a direct line relative, of mine.

For years, I have been told stories that we are related to the infamous Frank and Jesse James. While I have yet to make that connection through my James' line, I was able to determine that the James boys are also related to the above mentioned Simon Milbourne. Simon is the thirteenth great-grandpa of Frank and Jesse James. So, again, David, Frank, Jesse, and I share a common ancestor (Walter Devereaux), but David and the James boys share Simon.

History has always been one of my favorite subjects in school. Making these discoveries is making history even more meaningful to me. I am really enjoying this.

31 Days of Tree Climbing

I know; I'm too old for climbing trees. But these particular trees are so much fun to climb and, while I might get a headache from banging my head against them, I am unlikely to sustain any real physical injury from these trees. My favorite kind of tree to climb is our family tree.

I have come up against a multitude of brick walls while working on our family's genealogy. People with the answers to my questions have died and formerly found information has been lost in various moves or just outright stolen. Also, not everyone is keen on sharing the information that they have with me. No worries; playing detective can be fun and I don't mind working alone.

I bought two books over the last week that promise to offer a great deal of help with detective work and analysis. They are:
Forensic Genealogyand In Search of Your Confederate Ancestors

I am on a quest to qualify for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of the Confederacy. This has brought me to a few project ideas. One of the projects that I am working on is to find at least one Revolutionary War patriot for each branch of our family. The Revolutionary War was around the time of our fifth great-grandparents, which means about 64 surnames - assuming that I did the math right. This is not necessarily a safe assumption these days! A project this extensive isn't required to join the DAR. I only have to verify the lineage back to one patriot for membership. Thankfully, someone else has provided a path up that tree for me. More about that in another post!

I learned about the "31 Days" memes going on at The Nester through The Gypsy Mama's 31 Days to Write Your Story. This 31 Days adventure was meant for the entire month of October. I'm joining in late. Better late than never, right? Please stop by their blogs to read all of the wonderful things that they are sharing!

Disclosure: Book links are affiliate links and I will receive financial benefit if you purchase these books using the links provided.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: D is for Dallas

Dallas Winfield Greer, that is. Dallas was my husband's great-great-grandfather through his paternal grandmother. I think that his name sounds might grand. I love it.

He was born 23 March 1948. Here is a photograph of Dallas as an infant. Isn't he adorable?

He was in the War Between the States enlisted in Company K, 1st Regiment of the South Carolina Militia under Captain Prestin Thompson. He enlisted in August 1864 and was in service until May 1865. Note that he was approximately sixteen years old at the time of his enlistment. He survived the war and at the time of his death on 28 December 1942, he was one of only two remaining veterans of that war in Anderson County, South Carolina.

Dallas was the son of James Manning Greer and his wife Molly Tarver. James Manning Greer was the founder of Greer, South Carolina. The family is of Irish and Scottish ancestry.

He now rests with many other members of his family in the cemetery located at New Prospect Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina.

I enjoy his baby picture very much. I think that he and my oldest son favored each other a great deal at this age. Whenever I hear the word "Dallas", it isn't the city that immediately comes to mind. It is that sweet-faced little boy in the white dress.

A - Z Blogging Challenge: B is for Bruce and Bobby

B is for Bruce and Bobby

Bruce McClendon, born Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., is my late father-in-law. I called him “Papa” because that’s what we had decided for our future children to call him. He owned and operated the Western Auto Store in the town where my husband grew up. They had been there for about thirteen years when Papa came out his back door that morning and started ringing the old dinner bell in the yard between his own house and his mother’s house. He thought that he was having a heart attack. In reality, he was experiencing an aortic dissection. He was devoted to his business and all that he could think about as he was lying there on the ground was getting that store opened. My husband went in the ambulance with his daddy and I got the store opened. My mind was nowhere near being on work. I wanted to be there with Papa and David, too. He was pronounced dead at 10:10 am. and our lives have never been the same.

Bobby Joe Gunter was my uncle, my daddy’s older brother. He was in the US Army. He was stationed in Germany. When he was about twenty-five years old, he was standing on a street corner in the town where he was stationed and slipped in the snow. A snow plow was driving by at the time and Uncle Bobby was dragged along the road by the snow plow. I don’t know how far he was dragged. I never got to meet him as he died two years before I was born. My granny had a picture of him on a shelf in her living room. Losing him hurt her deeply. I was given the flag that had draped his coffin, but unfortunately it was stolen several years later. I don’t know what became of it. I hope that whoever has it realizes just what that tri-folded flag stood for and what it meant to our family, especially my granny.

A - Z Blog Challenge: A is for Annie

The A - Z Blog Challenge goes through the month of April. Read all about it by clicking this button:



A.

Annie.

Big Mama.

Wife and then widow of Andy.

That’s my great-grandmother. She died five years before I was born, thirty-three years after her husband died. I never met her but she had a big impact on my life. She took the lead role in raising my daddy. My grandparents had an unstable marriage and three children, my daddy being the middle child of the surviving children. Daddy thought the world of his “Big Mama”.

Annie had a sister named Susie. It is after these two sisters that I am named “Suzanne”. I consider it an honor to be named after women that meant so very much to my daddy. These women that I never met, they mean a great deal to me because, like my own grandparents, Annie was my daddy’s shelter during the storm of his childhood.

I can’t imagine a life without Annie.
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The Genealogy Blog Primer

I was visiting the GeneaBloggers website recently and came across the link to The Genealogy Blog Primer. It is available as a slideshow as well as a PDF. Enjoy!

A Genealogy Blog Primer

View more presentations from Thomas MacEntee

Please be sure to visit GeneaBloggers to find other cool things to help you with your genealogy research.

Counting People

To those of you that aren't into genealogy research, maybe you won't get why I'm excited about this, but I am very excited about 2 April 2012! While many people dread April because of taxes, I am looking forward to it because the 1940 US census records will be released. I can't wait! Neither of my parents will show up in this one; their first census was in 1950, but three of my uncles and my grandparents as new parents will be there. They asked new questions in this census that will give even more information (hopefully!) about the lives of my ancestors.

FamilySearch.org is looking for volunteers to help index the records so that they are searchable online. I want to do this, but am also afraid that I'll make a mistake that sends a future researcher into a tizzy (like happens to me all the time!). One wrong keystroke and maybe somebody doesn't find their grandpa in the census information. Though I know that I'm far from perfect, I am a perfectionist to the Monk degree sometimes and that often keeps me from doing things that ultimately I would really enjoy. I might just have to get over it and be super careful and just jump in to help index these records.

Thanks to those dedicated to making the online records searchable, I have been able to add quite a bit to my family tree over the last few weeks. Just today, I added two other branches to my paternal line. John and Kizzie Gunter are the parents of Big Papa, who was married to Big Mama, otherwise known as Annie (and the reason for the name of this blog). I found Kizzie's death certificate and this gave me the names of her parents, too. I haven't discovered any photographs of them yet, but if they are out there, I will find them. It leaves a fun discovery for another day, something else to look forward to.

Knowing how great these discoveries make me feel, how can I not do something that could help others as much as I've been helped in this way?

What are you not doing because you are afraid that you'll mess up or look foolish? Please share in the comment section.

Voices from the Past

Much of this last week, I have been spending more time amongst the dead than the living. I am working on a genealogy book to share with my children so that they don't have the thirty-year+ struggle that I have had tracing my ancestors, many times banging my head against a seemingly unbreakable wall.

Over the last few days, several of those brick walls have crumbled but good. I have found little bits and pieces about various branches of my family over the years, but as each generation passes, more is lost to those of us that come along later. Thanks to the work of other genealogists and the Internet, some of that "lost" information is no longer lost. I have found information that I didn't know that I didn't know. I have found names of collateral relatives (as in, not a direct-line relationship with me) as well as death certificates and, in the case of one woman, a birth certificate.

Last night, I stumbled across a website devoted to the genealogy of one of my great-great-grandmothers, Philadelphia Isabella, who was an Evatt before she married a Pressley, and her siblings. I had the names of her parents before and now I have pictures of them.

Here they are, my great-great-great grandparents, Jared David and Margaret Bush Gaines Evatt.

I can't begin to express the excitement that I feel with each new discovery, especially when those discoveries involve pictures of these folks that I never got to know. I am because they were and it is just incredible to get to put a face to their names after all of these years!

Genealogy: Family Group Sheets

Starting with your immediate family, write down the following information:

Husband:
Date of birth:
Place of birth:
Date/Place of death and burial:
      Father's name:
         Date/Place of birth:
         Date/Place of death and burial:
      Mother's name:
         Date/Place of birth:
         Date/Place of death and burial:
         Date/Place of marriage:

Wife:
Date of birth:
Place of birth:
Date/Place of death and burial:
Date/Place of marriage:
       Father's name:
         Date/Place of birth:
         Date/Place of death and burial:
       Mother's name:
         Date/Place of birth:
         Date/Place of death and burial:
         Date/Place of marriage:

Record this same information for any previous marriages of either/both spouses.

List the children, starting with the oldest, in birth order, also recording their birth dates and places.

List the dates/places of other important life events such as baptisms, graduations, enlistments, etc. for each person.

Genealogy: Let's Get Started!

Several posts ago, I mentioned the idea of a regular genealogy feature. Some weeks maybe it will be a long post, other weeks just a quick tip or prompt. I am open to suggestions so, please, do not hesitate to share with me what you would like to see here.

The best place to start with genealogy work is with what you know, then branch out towards the things that remain secrets for us to uncover.

You can use a pen and paper or a computer program of some sort (your choice) to help you keep up with the information that you will collect along the way. I use both, to varying degrees.

If you want to be able to store everything in your computer, a scanner would be a good investment at this point. Otherwise, file folders and large envelopes will come in handy for keeping up with vital records and photographs collected along the way.

Even with saving things digitally, it is always a good idea to have a hold-in-your-hand, hard-copy backup.

You may want to invest in a small recorder to carry with you as you visit older relatives especially. It is easier to record their stories rather than trying to keep notes as they talk. If they will allow a video recorder, that is even better! Prepare your questions in advance and then adjust as necessary as they tell their stories. Oftentimes, what they want to share is more interesting and more telling than what you went there seeking to find out.

Color-coding and numbering systems will make organization a little easier, too, but we will talk more in depth about these later.