Family history for the 21st century
So a huge part of my genealogy hobby as an adult has been going back and redoing all the haphazard research I did at 14. (And I don't beat myself up about the fact that 20+ years later I'm nowhere near finished with this project. See "Online Family Trees or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying … Continue reading William D. Butterworth (1849-1937) – who’s your daddy? (Solved)
I'm thrilled to finally be able to transcribe and publish another one of the letters from the late 1800's my cousin Ron West sent to me. These letters are from my West ancestors and are true treasures! The other two I've already transcribed can be found here: A Letter from Jennet Cowen West, 1888 A … Continue reading Letter from George W. West to Paschal West, 1887
Upon doing some light Sunday evening reading in the 1850 U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedule, I was delighted to discover this little gem about my home county, Cherokee County, GA. These notes are written by the census taker beneath the schedule of people who died between June 1,1849 and June 1, 1850: Transcription: There has been … Continue reading Of Smothering in the Most Beauteous of Counties
Yesterday I inadvertently had a War Movie Day. I happened to be at my mom’s while she watched Monuments Men, and then I went with my dad to see the new Brad Pitt WWII tank movie, Fury. Strangely enough, I had just hours earlier been perusing the Compiled Civil War Service Records for my 3rd … Continue reading Lightner West and the Horrors of War
Early on in the year, genealogist Amy Crow of No Story Too Small challenged all blogging genealogists to write about one ancestor per week for 52 weeks. This is my first entry in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. I think it's fitting that the first ancestor I blog about in the 52 Ancestors … Continue reading [52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks] Edward West, My Rabble-Rousing 87-Year-Old Grandfather
When you see this... And then you see this... And realize there was once a company with some line on an order form somewhere asking: Aha, you want to buy a marriage registry book for your county? How about a nice volume for "Colored" marriages? (The Times-Recorder is Americus, Georgia's newspaper to this day.) The … Continue reading [(Almost) Wordless Wednesday] Forsyth County Georgia Marriage Book G “Colored”
I'm just popping by to point out that I found some of my West family living a few doors down from the "Clampitt" clan in Franklin County, Arkansas. The origins of the famous Clampetts, late of Beverly Hills, has oft been in dispute. Maybe I just found them? 😉
Tl;dr - I'm looking for a genealogy app or software for Mac that's really heavy on place and migration route research. Know of anything? So you guys know that I'm an amateur genealogist. And like any amateur, I find myself starting out with cobbled together tools. I use Ancestry.com a lot, just because it's so … Continue reading Need Genealogy Software Recommendations
If you're like me you're grateful when you find a relative in a census or other source holding an occupation anything - ANYTHING - other than "farmer" or "farm laborer." ...But a book I've been wanting to read for over a decade and somehow finally just procured has me realizing that - like with just … Continue reading Behind “Farm Laborer”: A Peek at Working Whites of the Old South
As I approach my 50th blog post, I realized I haven't done a Follow Friday in forever. ...So here goes! Photography My Daguerreotype Boyfriend - Admit it. You thought Robert Cornelius, the photographer of the very first selfie back in 1839, was hot. (To me he looks like what Heathcliff should look like.) Well, this … Continue reading [Follow Friday] Your Daguerreotype Boyfriend, Child Laborers, & an American in Paris
Genealogy Technology 