30 June 2009

Investigating Autobiographies and hand written Records by family members

Dec 4 2004 my grandmother's house burned down. We salvaged what we could from the wreckage of the home and begin to catalog the contents. Among the contents was a metal lock box that had belonged to my grandfather , who passed in 1988. Grandma had never looked inside it because it was locked. With a little prying we managed to open the box. Inside was a birth certificate for me, his father's death certificate and a handwritten genealogy account from his sister Clyde Alice Parrish Willoughby.

Alice had also written an autobiography, which I have read in its entirety. She didn't write this until she was in her 80's. While she was able to recall things with remarkable detail there were inconsistencies with dates. This is understandable considering how many children she had (15 birth dates to keep up with.) and how many places she moved during her life.

So the point is, even if you get information from other relatives, you still need to verify it yourself.

25 June 2009

Receiving Letter From A Relative

While looking through some things in my grandmother's kitchen drawer I came across an old letter from a Louise Johnson. I asked my grandmother who she was and she told me she was a relative of my grandfather. It took her a little while to remember whose daughter she was but she finally told me she was the daughter of Minnie Mae Willoughby Radford who was the daughter of my grandfather's sister Smithie Ann Willoughby.

So I wrote a letter to her a few weeks back and I got a response today from her grandson Dave Dixon. I am looking forward to sharing information with Dave and see what types of information and maybe photographs he has in his holdings.

Women and their married names

Okay. I am a person that is really big on self identity and nothing seems to pain me more than reading an obituary or a death certificate and seeing as woman listed as Mrs. So and So. I understand the act of taking your husband's last name and all that jazz. ( I wouldn't do it if I were a woman but that's just me).

What irks me is I found a death certificate of an ancestor as Mrs. J Parrish. The obituary was the same way and in the obituary her daughters were listed as Mrs (their husbands names). I no longer have a connection to this family so I have no idea what her daughters names were to begin with. I have tried looking in marriage records for the men to see if I could come across them and the Parrish women they married and have hit a dead end.

Why couldn't the people placing the death certificate and obituary just give the woman her name. What did they do? Go around calling her Mrs So and So all day, everyday. Did no one ever hear her given name?

Maybe I just dont understand the need to only be known by a husband's name.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

19 June 2009

I got the information from the ECC Library today.

The information came in today from the Edgecombe County Memorial Library. Thank you to Ms Pam Edmondson who works there and is the Local History Specialist. She found me some invaluable information from The Daily Southerner January 14, 1938 edition.

My grandmother Ruby had recounted the story of when her sister Lessie was shot by her husband Walter Barnes. My grandmother was a witness to the event. I had obtained Walter's death certificate and seen that he died on January 13th of 1938. So I inquired at the Edgecombe County Memorial Library about possibly searching through the Daily Southerner.

Pam indicated that since I was in Wake County she could look for me and if she found anything let me know. She printed off 4 pages for me so I would have the whole story.

Now within the story it is mentioned that Ruby (my grandma) was a child bride and had been married for 3 years to Walter's uncle Ben and that she was 16 years old but looked younger. The article says that Ben is Walter's uncle but in truth it is the other way around. Walter was Ben's uncle.

I do want to point out that most of the article was about Walter's killing himself. Lessie being shot by him is almost like a sidenote in the story. I find this odd since she was the victim of an attempted murder.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

15 June 2009

Leads Today

Well I am very happy with today's search results.

First thanks to Pam at Edgecombe County Memorial Library for searching the Daily Southerner for me and finding the information I needed. She does a wonderful job over there in Tarboro.

I was looking to see if the Daily Southerner had written a story on the shooting of my great aunt Lessie Coley Barnes from January of 1938. She called me today and told me that yes, there was a story done and she had printed me out the pages she could find from the paper.

The Second thing I had her look for was any mention of my Hudson ancestors who worked for Runnymead mills there in Tarboro. She found and copied some stuff for me on them as well. So in all I am getting 12 pages!!!! At 0.15 a page that isn't bad!

Next time I am in Tarboro I am going to have to take a moment and go to the library so that I can thank her in person for her hard work.

Part 2:

I have also spent the last few days looking around on the Johnston County Heritage center website. I have found a lot of stuff on there! Check it out!

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

11 June 2009

Cemeteries: They Aren't Just For The Dead


Cemeteries! What a wonderful way to spend a day. What? That sounds creepy? No way. They are a smorgasbord of information, not to mention they are usually the most peaceful places.

Pictured to the left is a snapshot of me running through one of the cemeteries in Tarboro, Edgecombe County, NC. My sister Joanne is the one who took this lovely black and white photo.

Anyways, back on topic. I find it hard now to drive past a cemetery or graveyard without wanting to get out and go in and see if there are any Parrish's lain to rest within its gates.
Ironically doing this, I have found some of my ancestors in this way.

Also, networking with other genealogist's or family members who have been doing research helps to when looking for cemeteries. Just a few weeks ago I was in need of someone who lived in Wayne County to look through the cemetery index for that county to help me find where some of my Parrish's are buried. They found several of them in a cemetery in Pikeville.

Armed with this information I traveled from my home in Wake County to Wayne county and found the cemetery. It has been maintained and was easy to find. I was able to get several photographs of the tombstones and of the cemetery itself.

Speaking of it being maintained, there is nothing that saddens me more than an unkempt cemetery. I had the misfortune of running into one that was so overgrown there was no way I could enter the cemetery. What made it worse is that there are family members of the main family who are buried in the cemetery that live just down the road from the cemetery. I had one family member buried in the cemetery, she married into the family. Here is a picture of what it looked like.

As you can see it was all overgrown and I couldn't make my way into the graveyard.

When I go and investigate a graveyard, I take a long a pen and paper to jot down the names of the people, along with the inscriptions on their tombstones, found in the cemetery/graveyard. I also have on hand a digital camera so I can take photographs of the tombstones. Some people even take along paper and charcoal to do rubbings of the tombstones, but I do not. Once home I then catalog the cemeteries and all of the images from my camera under the correct one.

If the cemetery is one that has never been surveyed before I make sure to send a copy of my findings to the local library or to the NC State archives. So far I have only done this twice.

Just remember to be respectful of the dead. Do not leave trash behind or any other sign of disturbance when you leave. If you have the time and you come across a cemetery like the one above that is in bad shape due to neglect, take the time to clean it up the best you can. I now carry gloves and a pruner in the trunk of my car so I can do just that.

Happy Cemetery Hunting.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

Another Day, Another Record Search

Today's topic is looking for various vital statistics records; such as birth, death, marriage and wills.
County courthouses are a great place to start looking but have you thought about looking in your county library? Many libraries now have rooms set aside with collections for genealogists that can be very helpful.

Records I have found among the library shelves: index to cemetery records, indexes to marriage records of the county as well as indexes to wills. You can also usually find county newspapers on microfilm which are a great tool to use to find obituaries.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

10 June 2009

Getting down to business

So when I started one of the first things I did was I went out and bought two books. One is called The Genealogist's Companion and Sourcebook by Emily Croom. Great reference material. I also purchased The Organized Family Historian by Ann Carter Fleming.

Inside Ann Fleming's book is a cd rom with all of the forms you will need to be organized. Forms included are Family Group Sheets, research log, correspondence log, census forms etc. Each one is designed to help you keep up with all of the information you find.

Next you need to pick your filing system. Mine is a filing cabinet with each family member's name and family written on a folder.

Once I had the two books and my filing system set up I was ready to begin. The first thing I did was that I went to my dad and told him about the project. I then sat down with him and we filled in a family group sheet with our families information on it. Like our names, dates of birth, when he and my mother got married, when they got divorced, when he remarried to my step mom and so on and so forth. I also asked him questions about his childhood, about his parents etc. I wrote all this information down as we were talking.

That was when I learned about the practicality of having a tape recorder. I could then later go back and transcribe what was said instead of causing my hand to cramp trying to keep up. It also freed me up to really listen to what was being said.

Now that I had this information down I could now look for documentation. Documentation is important to a genealogist. You need the documentation to show where you have gotten your information from so that someone coming behind you in your research will know where you got your information from. If it comes from a family member , state who it was that told you and when. So for my father's interview the information he told me was typed out with the following example of documentation.

Interview with Henry D Parrish Sr. October 24, 2004 at his home (gave the address)

Armed with this information my next place to look was to the county courthouse. I was born in Edgecombe County, NC so this is where I went. ( I will go more in depth about finding records at your county courthouse in a later post.)

The people who work in the courthouse in Edgecombe County are some of the friendliest and most helpful people when you are looking through vital records. If you have a question they are more than happy to help. I cannot say this for all of the courthouse employees where I have gone looking for records. I have run into a few "bad apples" who were rude and inconsiderate. All I did was smile and say thank you despite their rudeness. You want to stay on the good side of the employees of the courthouse. So if one of the people who you come across has an attitude, keep a positive outlook and a smile on your face, otherwise they can make record searching difficult for you.

Once I had all of the documentation for my immediate family I had to decide which line to trace. Did I want to trace my father's line or my mother's line? After some consideration I decided to start with my father's line since I knew the most about this side of my family. ( I have since done my mother's side of the family).

At the time that I started this project, my grandfather had been deceased for 16 years. He died from a brain tumor the summer I was 12 years old. My grandmother was living however and she was able to tell me his parent's names. I also went to the Edgecombe County courthouse and got a copy of his death certificate. It also listed his parents names and my grandmother was listed as the informant who provided the information about him and his parents. Death certificates are a good source of family information not just about the deceased person but it will often time give the parents name of the deceased individual.

But remember you have to look at the courthouse in the county in which the person died, not in the county they lived, unless they died there. If a person lived in Pitt county but they died in Wayne county then you would have to go to Wayne County for the record.

Birth certificates are on file in the county courthouses in which the person was born.

So lesson for today is to gather your information from the living relatives for the family members you will be looking for. Document your information with documentation such as interviews, birth and death records as well as marriage records.

Document, Document Document is the lesson for the day.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

How I Got Hooked On Genealogy

I have a class at Edgecombe Community College to blame for my getting totally hooked on doing genealogy. It was 2004 and I signed up for a local history/genealogy class with Monika Fleming, author of Edgecombe County: Along the Tar River. Part of the class was spent talking about Edgecombe County historyand the other part of the class was doing a genealogy project.

I signed up for the class because I love history and it seemed interesting. I had heard that the professor, Monika Fleming, was a good professor to take history classes with, especially this class because she knew a lot about Edgecombe county and the town of Tarboro.

When people think of genealogy sometimes they think about searching for old census records or newspaper articles. They think to look through cemeteries to find their ancestors, which are good ways to find information. However, genealogy starts with the living. Your living relatives are great sources of information about your family past. Just remember that there may be some things that they do not want to share because they bring up painful memories. Respect their wishes and continue to work on your other leads that they give you.

I have been hooked now for five years and I have no intention of stopping now that I have started delving into my families past. I have found many interesting things in my search. It has also led me to get a better understanding of what the people who have come before me have experienced. It has given me a small glimpse into what their lives were like and how they lived.

Further postings to this blog will give more detailed analysis of my search for my family's legacy.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )

85 year old married to 13 year old in 1935!!!

 Things that truly make my head and heart hurt when I see them.  I saw this in the 1940 census for Pactolus, Pitt County, North Carolina whe...