A Belk Goldmine

I've had a lot of luck researching my half-brother's Belk family line today. I'd say it's more than enough to warrant a Happy Dance.

I found the family of John H Gurley & Evie (Williams) Belk in the 1920 census. The family had been miss-indexed as "Reek." I can see why, too. So, that was a good find.

Also, I found some photos of the same family line:

These photos were uploaded to the ancestry.com family tree of 'sharonporter1963'. Yay! I always love to find new photos of the folks in my family tree.

The Census - then and now

I know most genealogists are probably looking forward to the upcoming 2010 Census - I know I am. I've never actively taken part in a census before, but I plan to this year (my dad just filled it out and sent it back without any fan-fair). And, of course, genealogists are interested in past censuses.

As a subscriber to the US National Archive's YouTube account, I saw that they had put up video from the 1940 census. It contains very cool archival footage and has that patriotic feeling from similar government productions of the same time period. Here's one of the videos:

Also on YouTube, the Census Bureau has its own channel. It looks like they want to educate folks about how the census will be taken and what the different steps there are in the process. Check out their latest of their video:

Wordful Wednesday - Halloween edition

Complete with words this Wednesday (for you Phil!)

Halloween was celebrated when I was a kid - we did the usual pumpkin carving, dressing up, trick-or-treating, etc - but it apparently wasn't a reason to pay for film!

There's one photo of my sister and I dressed up for Halloween and one photo of my brother dressed up. That's it - one each. And the reason these photos exist: they were taken by other people and given to us. So, we dressed up every year, but I couldn't prove it through photographs! And I've never seen photos of my parents at Halloween either...

Tombstone Tuesday - Sprouse

My Great-Great-Great Uncle, Tullie Frederick Sprouse was born on 16 Sep 1870 in South Carolina. He was the son of William Washington Sprouse and Nancy K. Armstrong and the brother of my Great-Great Grandmother, Nina Sprouse Albea.

Tullie died on 29 Oct 1944 in Greenwood County, South Carolina. He was buried on Halloween. Talk about setting a mood - a funeral on Halloween!

Monday Memories - Halloween - Mom's Memories

Surname Saturday - Lindsey

I'm researching the Lindsey family as part of my (half) brother's line.

Lona C. Lindsey was his Great-Grandmother (also seen as Lonia). She was born on 17 Feb 1883 in Alabama and died on 4 Jul 1969 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She married Charles Marion Freeman on 17 Feb 1899 in Fayette County, Alabama. Their daughter, Lillie Ruth "Bobbie" Freeman was my brother's grandmother.

The Freeman line doesn't go back very far just yet - I haven't spent much time on it. According to a family Bible (sent to me from a descendent of one of Lillie's sisters), Lona's parents were John and Kate Lindsey.

I also found Lona's death certificate in Family Search's Alabama Death's collection. It gives her parents as John Lindsey and Katy Taylor. Based on family trees online, Kate might have also been called Judah.

I need to spend some more time on this family so that I can create a family tree of more than two generations on the Lindsey line. It looks like there are more children in the AL death index with 'John & Kate Lindsey' as their parents - so I'll start there and expand the family. After that, I'll look for them on the census.

If anyone else if researching the Lindsey family near Fayette County, Alabama, I'd love to hear from you!

A Weekend Link - Vintage Halloween

Halloween's coming up and I'm remembering some of the different Halloween's from my childhood. Feeling nastalgic, I started looking for vintage halloween photos. Check out the 'Vintage Halloween' group on flickr for a selection of photos from throughout the 20th century.

New on Flickr: People in Photos

My favorite photo sharing site, Flickr, has added a new feature: People in Photos. It's just about the same as the ability to tag people in photos that you've uploaded to Facebook. (See their blog announcement)

All you have to do is go to the photo you'd like to add people to and click and drag a box around the individual's face. A box will pop up, asking if you'd like this to be a note or a person. When you select 'person,' a box pops up and you can type in the person's name. It will search for user names or real name from your contact list. You can now view all photos of a tagged contact.

There's the drawback: the only people that you can add are people that you have marked as contacts on flickr. So, your mom doesn't have flickr? Can't mark her. All of the ancestors in my photos? Can't mark them. This is a major drawback to this great new feature, and I'm not sure why flickr has designed it this way. On Facebook, you can add a name regardless. I hope that flickr will adjust their People feature to be more flexible - I'd love to be able to add 'people' to all my genealogy photos.

Historic Georgia Maps

As part of the Georgia Virtual Vault, the GA Secretary of State's office has put historic Georgia Maps online. There are maps of 161 GA counties (some no longer in existence) that date from 1866-1935. You can browse a list of maps, or search the database in categories such as title, publisher, year, notes, etc.

The maps are available in high resolution and individuals can use the maps themselves as long as they give credit. For each map, there is a usually a bit of information about it's creation.

Map of Emanuel County, GA, cir. 1886:

Tombstone Tuesday - Carson

James P. and Mary Beaty Carson are buried at Bethel Cemetery in Smyrna, Cobb, Georgia. Both James and Mary were born in Cobb County and were married on 7 August 1869 in that same location. Their children were Nancy, Wyatt, Fiddlin' John, James, Sally, Charlie, and Eddie. Sally Carson married my Great-Great-Great Uncle, James H. Smith. Their son, Fiddlin' John Carson, was a famous country musician.

I found these graves quite by accident. Bethel Cemetery is also the location of the graves of my Great-Great Grandparents, Louise and Leverett Waters and their son, Jack. When I arrived at the cemetery, I saw that it was somewhat small, and decided to do a photographic transcription of it. A year or so later, I realized the relationship to the Carson graves.

In The Kitchen - Salmon Patties

This is one of my absolute favorites! And it's easy.

Ingredients:
3 cans of Salmon (boneless & skinless)
3 eggs
2 heaping soup spoons of sea food flour
1 heaping tsp cornmeal

Instructions:
Mix it all (not too dry!) and fry it in a pan of veggie or canola oil.

Try putting a pattie between a biscuit and have a salmon pattie sandwich - yum!

Traveling (SftC)

My ancestors don't seem to have been very interested in travel. None of my direct ancestors lived outside of the south. Thus, they weren't much for extravagant modes of transportation. For the most part, travel was done by car. And my ancestors seemed quite proud of their cars.

Like many families, my ancestors posed with their cars, showing them off. One of the oldest photos I have is of my Great-Uncle Milton Waters, standing by the family car in Cabbagetown, Atlanta, Georgia. The photo was probably taken in the late 1920s.

Throughout the family photo albums are other pictures of family members with their cars. I really like the photos. They can help to date the photo and show the economic status of the family at the time.

Another neat example of the way my ancestors traveled is a registration card for my Great-Grandfather Wm David Witt's 1920 Model T. This card was found in my Grandaddy's papers and it's one of my favorite documents. It's just so unique!

Floor Plans - Current House

This is the first in a series of posts that feature the floor plans of family homes. I hope to collect floor plans of my parents and possibly grand-parents homes.

I started with our current house. We moved in while I was in 3rd grade. This was the easiest, as I was able to measure the rooms and create a very accurate floor plan.

And here's a photo of the house. I could only seem to locate a photo of the entire house from one of the rare snow days.

Craft family DNA

Some time ago, I had my dad take a 64 marker Y-chrom DNA test through Family Tree DNA. His results came back as haplogroup G. Once I had his results, I joined them to the 'Craft Surname Project' on the Family Tree DNA website.

There are a number of participants in the group, with 25 DNA listings and 19 family trees. At this time, there are two group members with 12 marker tests who match my dad's DNA. However, they have not responded to emails.

So, if there is anyone who descends from Craft family lines in the Elbert, Hart, Lincoln, and Morgan Counties of GA, or near Anderson County, SC, who is thinking about testing their Y-DNA, I encourage you to do so. I'd love to have someone to compare my Dad's DNA to.

Here's a chart of a few of my Craft generations: (click on the image to see the whole thing)

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Found: Bennie England Craft Jr.

When my Great-Uncle passed away in 2005, there was something surprising in his obituary: mention of a brother that I'd never heard of. According to the obituary, my great-uncle had been, "preceded in death by brothers, B.E. Craft Jr., Marvin Craft and Thomas Craft." But who was B.E. Jr.? I'd never seen another mention of him - and this is a well researched family line.

I'd had no further success researching this new great-uncle - until last night. I was wondering around Ancestry.com's family trees and landed on the page of my great-aunt Mary Frances Craft. On her page was a story, titled "B. E.'s Burial." It read:

"When B.E. died only his sister Mary Frances Craft was able to go because the rest of the family was too sick the the flu to attend. She said the funnal home did a good job cleaning him up and put him in a pine box. - Story told by Mary Frances Craft to Jessica Mica"

Success! Finally, a piece of information proving the existence of my great-uncle. But it sounds like a sad story, and didn't really provide an data or dates. But, it did give me some idea of when B.E. might have died. His sister, Mary Frances, attended her funeral. Frances was born in 1922, and was old enough to attend the funeral on her own and to remember the event. So, he probably died in the late 20's or later.

I decided to check out GA death certificates. The online Georgia Virtual Vault is a great resource for those with GA ancestors. They recently added un-indexed 1928-1930 death certificates that I had not finished looking through. So, I headed over to check it out - no success. But wait! Craft is often indexed as Croft..... success!!! There it was, the obituary of B. E. Craft Jr.

The poor thing was only 8 months old and died of pneumonia.

What's his occupation?

Can anyone tell me what this says? It's the occupation of my G-Great Grandfather in 1930 Birmingham, AL.