HenrysHistories

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.

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.

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 ...

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 Wal...

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...

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 wi...

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. )

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 div...

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 the...