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!