This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is In the News. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.
Newspapers are great sources of genealogical information. Some common newspaper finds are birth announcements, engagement and wedding announcements, and obituaries. However, modern-era newspapers can also give clues about distant ancestors — like this article about my 6x-great-grandfather Jean Joseph Etier.
This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is 12. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.
This week’s prompt could be interpreted in many ways. The “12” could refer to an important date or may bring to mind an ancestor with 12 children. I thought of the War of 1812 and Bailey Loving, my 4x-great-grandfather who served in the Mississippi Militia during this conflict.
Continue reading Bailey Loving: War of 1812 VeteranThis entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is LARGE FAMILY. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.
Large families seem to run in my Smith genes. My mother was the oldest of 11 children, and my ancestors Lot Smith and Elizabeth Loving had sixteen!
My great-grandparents Thomas Leonard Smith and Lillie Modena Ingram also had a large family, but it was a blended brood of his, hers, and theirs. They were kind of like a 1920s version of the Brady Bunch — with an unfortunate mix of the Bible’s book of Job, too.
Continue reading Thomas Leonard Smith & Lillie Modena Ingram: Large Blended FamilyThis entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is BACHELOR UNCLE. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.
Our family histories are often focused on ancestors who married and had children — after all, that’s how we got here. But what about the bachelors and maidens in our family trees? They deserve to be remembered, too.
John Morgan Smith — known as “Uncle Johnny” — lived with my mother and her family in their dog trot-style farmhouse during her early childhood. He was my mother’s great-uncle. Without a family of his own, Uncle Johnny lived at Smith Hill for many years — first with his brother Leo Smith and Leo’s wife Dena, and then with my grandparents James Paul and Dorothy Smith when they took over the farm. Uncle Johnny’s room was the small one, second on the right, walking down the breezeway.
Continue reading John Morgan Smith: Bachelor Uncle?This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is AT THE COURTHOUSE. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.
Although genealogy interested me at a young age, I didn’t pick up this hobby — okay, obsession — until the internet made record access easy. I spent my early years researching from home in my pajamas, thinking all the documents I’d ever need were online. Oh, how wrong I was! As my skills improved and I moved onto more challenging research, I learned the records needed to solve difficult problems are rarely online. The most helpful evidence is often squirreled away in libraries or located at county and parish courthouses.
I visit courthouses around northeastern Louisiana almost every time I travel home. Because the past four generations of my family have lived in Liddieville, I spend a good deal of time at the Franklin Parish Courthouse in Winnsboro, Louisiana. The parish has not experienced any record loss since it was organized in 1843, so over 175 years of documents are available at the Clerk of Court’s office. Marriage, land, probate, civil court, and criminal court records — it’s all there. And none of it is digitized. Researching in rural courthouses like these means skimming through huge, musty-smelling books, asking staff to retrieve boxes from storage, and then personally digging through those boxes of original court documents. I love it!
One of my first big finds at the Franklin Parish Courthouse was a succession that provided death dates for two key individuals in my family tree: William Silas Johnston and his wife Amarentha “Alma” Smart.
Continue reading William Silas & Amarentha Smart Johnston: Courthouse Research Uncovers Death Dates