Falling, Falling, Falling Down That Rabbit Hole!

"Looking top an elegant spiral" is marked with CC0 1.0.

It was one of those days when I had a hint pop up on Ancestry.com, something about Tomlinson McCarty, the husband of my Third Great Aunt, Mary Ann Elizabeth Slade. So, I click on it, and I found myself spiraling down that research rabbit hole. I clicked on the hint because I hoped to learn when Elizabeth (her preferred name) Slade McCarty died. Did I learn about her death? NO, but I learned was a lot about the Tomlinson family, things that kept me busy for the better part of a week. 

I started my search with the Ancestry hint and learned more about The Rev Tomlinson McCarty who died in 1868 and was buried at the Ebenezer Methodist Church Cemetery in Lamar County, Georgia. We would expect the wife of a minister to be buried along side him, but I could find nothing on FindAGrave, Billion Graves, or random Google searches to indicate a burial place anywhere for Elizabeth Slade McCarty. 

Next I tried using US Census records where I found entries for her in 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 but wasn't able to find her in any later census records. Those records did provide some interesting information that indicated Elizabeth moved with all of her younger children to Clay County, Georgia by 1870 and then moved further to Randolph County, Georgia, by 1880. With each of these moves, the children 18 and younger moved with her while her older children, at times, lived elsewhere.

Since census and burial records had not provided the information I was seeking, I decided to use a technique I call "So, Where's Mama?", researching the children of a mother to see if she eventually ended up living with any of them or was buried in the same cemetery as one of her offspring. Since Tomlinson McCarty and Elizabeth Slade McCarty had 14 children, it took a while to see who lived where through the years. 

Here is a brief summary of what I learned about the McCarty children, my first cousins, 3x removed.

• Martha R McCarty (1844-1914) had no record of any marriage. She lived with her parents and later with her mother through the 1880 census, but according to the 1870 census Martha was living next door to her mother, living with the family of Seaborn and Julia McCarty Jones, most likely a relative of her father. Later in 1900, Martha was living with her brother James McCarty and his family in Dothan, Alabama, where she died in 1914 and was buried.

• Julie E McCarty (1845 - unk) has no record of marriage up through 1880. Julie lived with her mother according to the 1850 and 1860 census records, but in 1870 she lived with her uncle Herbert Turner and aunt Lavinia Slade Turner. According to the 1880 census, Julie was still living with her mother's sister Lavinia Slade Turner and had moved with that family to Whitfield County, Georgia. I was unable to find any further census, marriage, or death record for Julie.  

• Samuel A McCarty (1846-1916) left his mother's home in 1870 after his marriage to Armonia Crawford. The young couple, in 1870, lived with the family of Alexander McCloude where Samuel was a laborer on the McCloude farm. Samuel continued to farm for the rest of his life. Sometime after the mid 1880s, Samuel and his family moved to Union County, Arkansas. The 1900 census showed the McCarty family living close to the family of D W Crawford who seems likely to be Daniel Crawford, a brother of Armonia Crawford McCarty. After Armonia died about 1910, Samuel's son James and his family moved to live with Samuel until Samuel died in Arkansas and was buried there in 1916.

• Joseph Cicero F McCarty (1847-abt 1892) married Susan Oxford in 1868 after which the young couple lived in their own home in Pike County, Georgia according to the 1870 census. Some time about 1878, Joseph and Susan moved to Texas as indicated in birth information for some of their children in the 1880 census record for Smith County, Texas. James was originally a farmer, but later became a County Treasurer and then a state Tax Adjuster. The 1891 City Directory for Dennison, Texas listed Susan McCarty as the widow of Joseph and indicated that two of her sons were living with her at her Dennison home. An entry in FindAGrave listed Joseph's death in 1888 and his burial in an unmarked grave in Dennison, Texas, but once again no mention of his mother Elizabeth being buried in that cemetery. 

• Sarah Lavinia McCarty (1851-1875), following her marriage to Jehu Clark, lived in Pike County, Georgia were the couple raised a family. Sadly, Sarah died in 1875, possibly due to complication of childbirth as her fourth child was born that same year. After her death, Sarah was buried in the Ebenezer Church Cemetery of Lamar County, Georgia, the same cemetery where her father was buried.

• James H McCarty (1852-1922) was living with his mother Elizabeth in Clay County, Georgia until his marriage to Caroline Bell in 1876. By the 1880 census James and Caroline were living in Randolph County, Georgia, and his mother Elizabeth's census information was the next family on the census record. James, Caroline and their four children had moved to Dothan, Alabama by the 1900 census enumeration, and at that time, his sister Martha or "Mat" was living with them. As mentioned previously, Martha lived with James and his family until her death in 1914. The 1920 census listed Mary Bell, the sister of Caroline Bell McCarty, as living with the family, even though Caroline had died in 1918. James McCarty passed away in 1922 and was buried in Dothan, Alabama.

• William C McCarty (1855-1933) lived in Clay County, Georgia for a number of years, first with his mother and by 1880 living on another farm where he was a hired laborer. Sometime after the marriage of William and Hattie Naramore in 1887, the couple moved to Colquitt County, then by 1910 to Early County, Georgia where they lived with Hattie's father Cyrus Naramore. Later, in the 1920 and 1930 census records, William was living in Polk County, Florida with the family of Clarence Bell, a younger brother of Caroline Bell McCarty. The Florida death index records that William died in 1933, but I was unable to find a burial site for him.

• Charles W McCarty (1857-1888) lived with his mother in Clay County, Georgia until he married Rosa Thornton in 1878. Following their marriage, Charles and Rosa were living in nearby Stewart County, Georgia. Some time before Jan, 1889, Charles, Rosa, and their family had moved to Texas. Charles died in January of 1889 and was buried in Dennison, Texas. His wife Rosa never remarried and lived in Texas where she died and was buried in 1933.

• Mary P McCarty (abt 1859 - unk) is one member of the family for whom I could find no record beyond her living with the mother Elizabeth in the 1870 census. Age wise, she might have married by 1880.

• Simon S V McCarty (abt 1860 - unk) like his sister Mary, has no record beyond his mention in the 1860 census and no burial information. HOWEVER, the 1870 census included information about a Thomas McCarty, born about 1859. Perhaps it was Simon T McCarty in 1860 and Thomas in 1870 because there is information about Thomas McCarty.

• Thomas McCarty (1860- 1907) IF Simon V was really Simon T for Thomas, it was fairly easy to trace the life of Thomas McCarty. Thomas was listed as living with his mother Elizabeth in the 1870 and 1880 census records. In 1881, a marriage for Thomas McCarty and Willie Glenn was recorded in Henry County, Alabama. Thomas and Willie continued to live in Dothan, Alabama until Willie died in 1901 and Thomas in 1907; both are buried in Dothan, Alabama in the same cemetery as Thomas's brothers James and Richard and his sister Martha.

• Emma McCarty (abt 1862 - unk) like her sister Mary had left no record beyond her mention in the 1870 census where she was living with her mother.

• Richard C McCarty (1862-1931) left lots of records for tracing his life. He stayed with his mother through the 1880 census then married Mollie Glenn in 1883. Apparently soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Florida where their two oldest children were born after which the family moved to Alabama by 1893 where their youngest child was born. Living in Geneva County, Alabama, Richard and his family were near his brother James. The family continued to live in that area until Richard died in 1931 and his wife Mollie in 1941.

• Albertus S McCarty (1865-1945) was one family member who moved away from farming, becoming a jeweler and watch maker for his entire career. In 1896 Albertus, or Bert as he became know, married Eulalia Stawall. By 1910 the couple had birthed five children, but only two daughters were still alive in 1910. The family moved to Tampa, Florida by 1920 and lived there for the remainder of the lives of Bert and Eulalia.

• John R McCarty (1867-1944) apparently lived with his mother Elizabeth until he married Lillian Sims in 1892. By the 1900 the young couple were living in Dothan, Alabama, the same town as his brother James and his family. The 1910 census found John and his family living in Decatur County, Georgia where he farmed and was a carpenter. John's wife Lillian died in 1930 and John in 1944; both are buried in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Lessons Learned: 

• Sometimes it's OK to spiral down a rabbit hole in researching a family. I was somewhat familiar with the Slade family, but the McCarty family was new to me. I found that using many of the resources already familiar to me helped me find a lot of information about a new family. 
• It was also interesting to see the connections between family members living near or with each other through the years, something not so much the norm in today's mobile society. The westward movement of individuals was similar to what I had found in other families in the post Civil War time period as individuals sought more land and perhaps a new sense of adventure. The variety of occupations within the McCarty family was also interesting to note. 
• Finally I continually wished that more Georgia counties had maintained an index of marriage for women and not just had an index for males. With an index of women, it might have been possible to find marriage records for Julia, Mary, or Emma.
• As for Elizabeth, I will continue to return to her from time to time as see if newly digitized records can help me learn more about her.

Resources used: (rather than 100+ footnotes)

• U S Census records, various years, accessed www.Ancestry.com
• "U S City Directories, 1822-1995" various cities, accessed www.Ancestry.com
• "Florida Death Records", accessed www.Amcestry.com
• FamilySearch.org
• FindAGrave
• BillionGraves
• Georgia's Virtual Vault "Marriage Records" various counties. accessed https://vault.georgiaarchives.org/digital/collection/countyfilm

Labels: Genealogy Resources: Lessons Learned; Rabbit Hole Genealogy; Slade

Getting From HERE to THERE In Quarantine Time

After seven weeks of self-imposed quarantine and state mandated "shelter-in-place" during the Spring of 2020, I had put a big dent in my pile of research documents that had needed to be filed. I was actually studying, documenting, labeling, and filing almost every other day. But then one day, I came across a land record that had been in my pile for almost three years. I was ready to do a "Genealogy Happy Dance" because that record sparked my curiosity, making me want to learn more about it, and, admittedly, letting me leave filing for a while without feeling any guilt.

The document was a land warrant conveying 236 acres in Green(e) County, Tennessee to Joseph Bogle, my husband's fourth GreatGrandfather. Were my husband still alive, I knew this would have been some research he would have wanted to help me explore. And explore I did.

"Ancestry.com. North Carolina and Tennessee, Early Land Records, 1753-1931"

Step 1: The first thing I needed to do was to transcribe that document written over 230 years ago. I had found the record in Ancestry's database of "North Carolina and Tennessee, Early Land Records, 1753-1931", but the transcription made the record so much easier to read. For convenience, I also photocopied my transcription onto the source citation I had downloaded with the record.

Step 2: Although I no longer lived in the area, I still had a real interest in learning more about where the land belonging to Joseph Bogle was actually located. I wanted to see if I could find the 236 acre plot on a topographic map of Greene County, Tennessee (today the name of the county is spelled with that final "e").

Google Maps made it quick to find Little Chucky Creek in Greene County, but locating Delaney Creek took some time. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) now had free map downloads available on their website using the the TNM download. It was relatively easy to follow the course of Little Chuckey Creek on the topographic map of Greene County. After a few minutes of sizing and resizing portions of the sectional maps for Greeneville and Mosheim (towns in Greene County), I found "Little Chuckey at the mouth of Delaney Creek" or Little Chucky Creek and Dulaney Branch as they are labeled on the current topographic map.

The red diamond indicates where Dulaney Branch runs into the Little Chucky Creek

Step 3: The warrant was for 236 acres, but knowing the hills, valleys, creeks, and rivers of this area, I had to wonder what that plat of land might look like. I knew there was platting software available to purchase, but I was hoping to find a free way to plat the land warrant. Online I found two great articles that explained just how to do that. Both articles are now printed and in my "Land Records" research folder.

Mark Hamilton's The Walden Effect blog had a post on "How to Map Property Boundaries From a Deed". (1) I especially appreciated the photos of his platting process. Hamilton also included a diagram of a surveyor's compass, an instrument that turned out to be much easier to use than the old school protractor I found in my desk. I followed his suggestion to photocopy the compass and was finally able to get my final plat line to join back to the starting point of my property drawing. Hurrah!

The second helpful article "Land Platting Made Easy" was written by Kimberly Powell.(2) It featured a step by step process for platting as well as helpful descriptions and examples. Basically I followed Powell's list of steps and referred to Hamilton's post for visuals.

Powell's article called for transcribing the deed or land warrant and creating a call list before ever attempting to plat the deed. Transcribing the land warrant I had found online made it much easier to read and to double check my directions. The call list is simply a list of the directions that were taken in the survey, things like:

• Beginning at Gamel's at a dogwood  (Starting point of the survey was apparently property belonging to a Mr. Gamel, at the corner where there was a dogwood tree)
• On a line South 47 East (From the dogwood tree, go on a course of SE 47 degrees)
• One hundred and ten poles to a hill to a poplar (Go on this SE course for 110 poles or 1815.0 feet as 1 pole equals 16.5 feet to the poplar tree on the hill)

Having the list also made it simple to check off each step as I had marked it on my graph paper which had been a free download from PrintFreeGraphPaper.com.

My transcription and Calls List for the land warrant.

After switching from the school protractor to the surveyor's compass, I finally came up with a plat that was a visual for the information presented in the land warrant.  

My plat drawing, made with the help of a paper surveyor's compass.

Step 4: The final step was to compare my drawing with the topographic map I had found. Would my drawing fit? Unfortunately I had not made my land plat on the same scale as the downloaded USGS map so I had to do so thinking here. Going back to the map segment I downloaded in Step 2, I noticed that it was shown with the scale of 2 cm equals 1000 feet. With that basic information I copied the photo of my plat drawing and resized it on a Word document until that long East to West line from a stake to the poplar was 5 1/2 cm / 2 1/8" to more accurately represent the 165 poles / 2722.5 ft indicated in the land warrant.

After cutting out the resized shape, I tried putting it onto the larger 2 cm = 1000 feet map, hoping to find a place where Joseph Bogel's property seemed to fit. No matter where I placed the plat shape, I wasn't able to find a spot near the juncture of Little Church Creek and Delaney Branch that had a hill where the shape indicated one should be. The exact location will need to be determined by someone who actually knows what s/he is doing.

Plat template and the map

Spending this time looking at the deed, drawing the boundary lines for the property, and trying to locate the area was a welcomed break from filing. I also leaned about some new resources that I expect to use in the future.

And, of course, I ended up with more questions. After all, Joseph Bogle was living about 50 miles away in Blount County at the time the land warrant was written, living there up to his death in 1790. Did Joseph Bogle ever set foot on this property? Was the land meant to be payment to him for his service in the Revolutionary War? Did he sell it? Did he not act on the land warrant such that it just went to someone else? More questions for another day. And perhaps I will find another treasure to examine when I return to filing.

.....................

(1) Hamilton, Mark, "How to map property boundaries from a deed". The Walden Effect. accessed 4 Apr 2020. http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/How_to_map_property_boundaries_from_a_deed/.
(2) Powell, Kimberly. "Land Platting Made Easy." ThoughtCo, Feb. 11, 2020, thoughtco.com/land-platting-made-easy-1422116.

Who Was Joshua Stevens and What Were He and Solomon Kemp Doing in My Files?

It all started as I was going through things in the attic, doing the "50 Year Purge", trying to get years of files, folders, and contents of forgotten boxes under control. While going through a folder with my father's name on it, I found several things I remembered my mother giving to me years ago, but then I find a surprise. There, in the folder, along with my dad's military papers and a few old newspaper clippings was an envelope marked in my handwriting "An old deed". Inside that envelope I found this brittle, stained sheet of paper, apparently a document to record the sale of land by Solomon Kemp to a Michael G..... in 1842.

Sale Receipt for Solomon Kemp, 1842

I also found a second, smaller envelope, this one labeled in my mother's writing, "Old deed with seal attached". When I carefully opened the envelope, this is what I found.

Deed to Georgia Land Lottery Draw for Joshua Stephens, 1832

With a quick glance, I realized that I was looking at pieces of an original deed or document relating to a draw from the 1832 Georgia Land Lottery. And I knew I needed to learn as much as I could about these documents and the people involved. And I needed to come up with a research plan for gathering information about these documents beyond the obvious reading of the words on those pieces of paper.

In years past, someone had tried to tape together the fragile pieces of the Stevens document. Today, the fragments are almost too brittle to touch, so I tried to handle them with as gently as possible. After photographing the two documents, I felt the next step was to transcribe them. Having the transcriptions gave me sheets of paper that were much easier to read, papers I didn't need to be concerned about getting stains, spills, or anything else to cause further damage to the original documents.

So, here I am about 24 hours later, actually starting to learn a little about Joshua Stevens. Here is what I have come across thus far.

• Step one, check in my Family Tree Maker software for a Joshua Stevens. I did not have that exact name among ancestors or relatives. I have one Stevens male, no given name, who married into my mother's side of the family in the late 1770s according to the Massachusetts Town and Vital Records found on Ancestry.com, but I doubted if he would have been part of the 1832 Georgia Land Lottery. Other Stevens family members were from a marriage into my father's side of the family in 1899, so I am ruling out an established Stevens connection for the present time.

• I've decided to start a separate tree in Family Tree Maker for Joshua Stevens. This way whenever I come across anything noteworthy, I have a place to record it. 

• My first entry, beyond his name, was to record the Property fact that he drew Lot 946 in the Fifteenth District of the Second Section of Cherokee County, Georgia. 
• Next I added that at the time of the draw, he was a resident of Madison County, Georgia.  

• Both my family and my husband's had members who had been involved in the Georgia Land Lottery of 1832. My first research was to look at James F Smith's fabulous book, The Cherokee Land Lottery, Containing a Numerical List of the Names of the Fortunate Drawers in Said Lottery, With an Engraved Map of Each District. This treasure is available to view through both HathiTrust and The Internet Archive or abstracted on Ancestry.com. 
• Imagine my surprise when I learned there was NO map for the Fifteenth District, Second Section of the drawing, NO list in number of draw order for the lottery winners! This was due to the fact that this district, along with some others, was considered to be a "Gold District". No gold was promised on the land, just the feeling that there "might" be gold there. Information for lottery winners for Gold Districts turned out to be in another book, one I haven't been able to find available online.
• Thanks to www.worldcat.org I've found that copies of Alphabetical Index to Georgia's 1832 Gold Lottery were available at several libraries around metro Atlanta, so heading to one of them and finding the book is on my To-Do List on a future trip to Georgia.

• I located a Joshua Stephens living in Madison County, Georgia, in the 1830 census and also in the 1820 Madison County census. No success, however, in locating a Joshua Stephens anywhere in Georgia in 1840 ... yet

• The Georgia Virtual Vault presents a number of digitized resources, the originals of which are housed at the Georgia Archives. One resource is their database of "Georgia Colonial and Headright Plan Index, 1735-1866". If Joshua Stephens was in Madison County Georgia in the early 1800s, there was a good chance that he had received land as a settler moving into the area.  Through this database, I learned that Joshua Stephens had received several grants totalling over 700 acres in Madison County so he was already an established land holder at the time of the Cherokee Land Lottery.

• Next stop was FamilySearch.org where I looked through their collection of "Georgia, Headright and Bounty Documents, 1783-1909". This time I had the actual digitized documents to read including:
• a survey request to lay off 30 acres for Joshua in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, in 1797 
• Land Warrant #21 that gave Joshua 300 acres in Madison County, Georgia, in 1813 and
• Land Warrant #174 that gave Joshua 450 acres in Madison County, Georgia, in 1826

• My next research steps will be to find out what happened to Joshua Stephens after 1832. This means checking resources such as
• FindAGrave, BillionGraves, WikiTree to find a possible death date
• Wills and Probate records on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org to perhaps learn what happened to his land after his death
• Fold3.com to see if Joshua had any military service that might have been the catalyst for acquiring his various land grants
• Look for website, etc. where I can locate lot 946 on a present day map. This might help me have a clue as to who may have lived there.

Now for my Georgia To-Do List

• Visit a metro Atlanta library, get a copy of Alphabetical Index to Georgia's 1832 Gold Lottery, and learn more about Joshua's fortunate draw.

• Check in Cherokee County Georgia to learn who later bought the land from Joshua Stephens and try to trace the land's ownership into the Perkinson family.

• After I finally figure out why I even have these things, I want to contact county or state archives to see if an Archive or local history center might be a more fitting home for this interesting old document, especially as I am not aware on any Cherokee Lottery Land still owned by our Perkinson family.

As for the 1842 document signed by Solomon Kemp, that will have to wait for another research spurt. Looks like I have enough to keep me busy, out of trouble (and the attic), and even writing a few more blog posts for quite a while.

It Never Hurts to Go Looking : Taking Time to Visit Enon

Enon Cemetery, Woodstock, Georgia, 4 June 2019
personal photograph

It was one of those perfect days for a cemetery visit, not yet Georgia summer hot, cloudy but not rainy, and an uncrowded midweek morning. I had visited several times over the past 20 years to take pictures, but this time I had another purpose. I knew that my relatives were buried in a family plot, but I wanted to record exactly WHO was WHERE and to be certain that I had a picture of each marker in the plot. It was time for me to make a map of the family plot.

Although it had been close to 10 years since my last visit to Enon, it was easy to locate the Perkinson family plot. It is the plot with the tall obelisk near its center.

Perkinson Monument
personal photo

Armed with pen and paper and my cell phone camera, I arrived at Enon Cemetery midmorning and was pleased to see that paved parking places were now available just next to the family plot. I decided to work left to right, front to back, to document all of those buried in the plot. 

Rough sketch of the Perkinson family plot

My quick sketch of the plot included a number and the name of the one buried there. It was not an architectural or even scaled drawing by any means, but it is enough for me to see who is buried where and to consider some relationships. The numbers on the sketch made it easy to locate the corresponding photo in my phone's camera roll for that day. The arrow pointing right at grave 24 refers to three more graves in that row, graves which I documented on another page. Later I plan to upload any new photos to BillionGraves.com so that all of the burials in the plot will be recorded in their database.

As I walked around the plot and made notes, I came across this section which I do not remember ever noticing before. It took looking at all three relatively recent markers to see the family connection among the unfamiliar surnames. And the box of artificial flowers here and on a few other graves was a touch I had not seen often at Enon. It made me wonder if there had recently been a Decoration Day at Enon. Decoration Day, a long standing tradition in the rural south, is a time for families to gather at the burial place of ancestors, clean the cemetery of weeds, leaves, etc., and perhaps leave flowers in memory of loved ones. DigitalHeritage.org has an interesting article about this observance.

Finally, once home, as I was writing the detailed list of the burials, it was interesting to determine who was the first one to be buried in the plot at Enon Cemetery. The first family member buried in the plot was six month old Willie Perkinson, a younger brother of my grandfather, who was buried at Enon in 1883. In 1894, Walter Dean, a grandson of my second great grandparents, was buried there at the age of four months. Then followed the interments of various Perkinson and Dean family members and relatives up to as recently as 2017. Perhaps I need to start referring to this plot as the Perkinson-Dean Family Plot in recognition of the blending of the two families.

Lessons Learned:

• Taking the time to look at all the graves and markers made me want to be certain of the family relationship of each person buried there. Now that I'm home, I am listing each person buried in the family plot, their birth and death dates, relationship to anyone buried in the family plot, and a notation for any direct ancestor. Having this information along with a neater version of the plot map will help me. I plan to add the redrawn plot map, the relationship list, and labeled thumbnail photos to my Perkinson Family file folder. Plus, a copy will go to my brother. As the old saying goes, it's hard to know the players without a program.
• There were a few recent burials in the family plot for whom I need to document their relationships in my genealogy software.
• It was a time to pause and reflect when I saw the graves of six young children buried among the 34 family graves. I wondered if these young deaths corresponded to pandemics sweeping the area or if they were caused by genetic problems or undiagnosed health issues.
• The variety of last names - Barnes, Dean, Drinkard, Felton, McAfee, Perkinson - give this plot the feeling of the small town where most of those buried had lived at some point in their life.
• As I explore some of the relationships, I am reminded once again that there may be something new to learn when we revisit a genealogy resource. Documents, photos, even grave markers can continue to provide additional information when we take another look; they might even lead to new questions to research.
• My decision to include a visit to Enon came as I was planning to visit the Woodstock Public Library, just across the street. My purpose for going to the library related to my quest to find an elusive marriage verification I needed for my DAR membership application. Still no luck finding any marriage information, even in among obituaries on microfilm of old newspapers, but the trip to Enon was a worthwhile endeavor. Combining research missions helped me have success in one area even if the other task was less fruitful.

Getting This Party Started

This year is going to be a special one in my hometown of Johnson City, Tennessee. Our town, being 150 years old, will celebrate its sesquicentennial in 2019, and the party has begun.

So much to see, hear, and do at this party.

On Saturday, Jan. 5, several hundred citizens, along with local politicians, a beauty queen, and a member of Congress all gathered in downtown Johnson City to get our party started. The focus for this event was the display of items previously placed in a time capsule back in 1969. This capsule had been created during the celebration of Johnson City's centennial. Wanting to look at the capsule's contents was enough to get me out of the house to attend the event. I'm so glad I did.

Metal sign from the actual 1969 time capsule

A portion of the sign from the time capsule was on display. I learned that the capsule had been installed during the construction of the high school which my children later attended. The accompanying list of artifacts showed that items ran the gamut from serious to fun.

There was an impressive variety of items in the 1969 time capsule.

The line to gaze at the items from the capsule moved slowly, but no one seemed to mind as virtually everyone could find something interesting in the display. There were items pertaining to city government such as the former city flag, a 1969 city map, a copy of the 1969 city budget and a key to the city. Also on display were photos and information about the city's hospitals of the day, our public school system, the two local colleges, and the university.

Admittedly, the line slowed as we passed by the displays relating to everyday life, things like a 1969 Sears catalog, newspapers with historical headlines like "Men Walk on Moon", samples of products made in our town, and some popular children's toys. There was a fascinating scrapbook of local newspaper articles covering the variety of events celebrating the 1969 centennial, and there always seemed to be school age students leafing through its pages. I was excited to learn that the time capsule items will remain on display in the downtown area for some time so that others can continue to take a closer look at our city's more recent history.





Another part of the official program included the reading of a letter written by the 1969 mayor of the town to the 2019 Johnson City mayor. Our present mayor, a woman with a distinguished record of public service, didn't seem to mind reading the salutation, "Dear Sir" and graciously accepted the letter's warm wishes for success and prosperity for our city in the year 2019.

My favorite part was seeing the number of children and younger families at the party. They would browse the numerous displays of photos of churches, businesses, and schools from the town's 150 year history. And there would usually be an older person close by who was glad to answer any of their questions about the past. I was one of them as I answered a few questions relating to the picture of my church's building back in the early 1900s.

It was interesting to see photos of city churches throughout the years.

Another fun spot was a craft table, complete with small cardboard boxes, markers, and stickers, whatever a child might want to make and decorate his or her own time capsule box to take home, fill, and then open at some point in the future. Seeing the kids working on their boxes made me wish my grandchildren had been in town and could make a box for themselves.

Making your own time capsule was a great family project.

There was no Photo Booth at this party. Instead, people could record a message to the future to be included in the 2019 time capsule. It turned out to be another great family activity. No one seemed to mind the spectators who gathered to watch and to hear the various individuals and groups contribute a 30 second message, a few even adding a little song and dance to their message. Hopefully, 2069 technology will permit these messages to be played and enjoyed in the future.

Recording a greeting for the 2069 Bicentennial

And the party wasn't just things to look at. We had a sing-along to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", a hit song from 1969. We celebrated as three generations of a family blow out the three giant candles on the birthday cake. And what's a party without cake! Everyone was invited to sample the delicious birthday cake, made by a local baker who just happens to be scheduled to be on a Food Network program in the coming months. It all made for a pretty good party.

I'm already looking forward to attending future sesquicentennial events. The more, the merrier.

Display from the George Carter Railroad Museum at East Tennessee State University

Some Genealogy Musings:

• The photo displays were well organized and labeled. The hard work of others provided lots of information in an interesting and accessible manner. In a similar vein, when we share old family photos, it might garner more interest from family members if we, too, include a little bit of the Who, What, When, and Where to accompany some of the pictures.

• It was great to see the time capsule activity available for children. We just might have some new historians on our hands at the bicentennial in 2069, ones whose interest started with a simple craft idea.

• Our public library had a display of some local history materials from the Tennessee Room, their genealogy collection area. There was also a member of the library staff present to talk with people about the library's genealogy resources as well as to provide information about our local genealogy society. This was a simple, effective marketing tool.

• Additional photos and resources were provided for viewing at the party by East Tennessee State University and by the Archives of Appalachia which is housed at the university. This was another example of increasing exposure within the community as to the variety of historical (and potentially genealogical) resources available at the local level. It also spoke loudly of the important of providing accessibility to such resources.

• The party was another reminder that we, too, are part of making history every day.

#JohnsonCity150 #citycelebrations #JCTNsesquicentennial

Taking a Closer Look ... at Ruth Edith Smiley

Ruth Edith Smiley Andrews
from personal collection of Mary P Nelson

March, being Women's History Month, seemed like a good time to look more closely at the lives of some of my female ancestors. And in looking, I learned a few things that have somehow never registered with me as I focused on learning more about my Great Grandmother Ruth Edith Smiley Andrews and my 2Great Grandmother Minerva Melvina Hammond Smiley.

My first task for Ruth Edith Smiley was to locate some census records that I had missed for her timeline. I had previously found her living with her parents, Thomas Bainbridge Smiley and Minerva Melvina Hammond Smiley. The census records for 1870 and 1880 had provided that information. 

What was missing for Ruth Edith Smiley, however, was a census record for 1900, the first census record following her marriage to my Great Grandfather William Howard Andrews.(1) Edith and Howard were not to be found anywhere using any variation of their names in their home county of Crawford, Pennsylvania. 

Pointing me in another direction was the transcript of a letter Edith had written in December, 1900, to a relative. According to the letter, given to my mother at an Andrews family reunion in the 1990s, Edith and Howard were living in Celina, Tennessee that December. She mentioned that the family had

"spent three months on the farm with our folks this summer. I sold our Bradford house and went home to wait for my husband. He had come here [Celina, TN] last year to get cross ties ... We moved here the last of August [1900]."(2) 

I headed back to census records for Bradford, Pennsylvania, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, and Celina, Tennessee, looking without successful for any mention of Edith or Howard, or their being listed with an incorrect surname as living with or near Edith's parents back in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. I still have not located that elusive 1900 census record for the family, but I have come away with a new admiration for Edith selling her home and dealing with six young children back in Pennsylvania while her husband Howard was traveling in and from Tennessee in his business as a lumber dealer. Not an easy situation in today's time or in 1900.

Fast forward to 1930, the year of another missing census record for Edith. My Great Grandfather Howard had died in 1928, and this would have been the first census record of Edith as a widow. Previously the census records had always listed Edith as Ruth Edith or Ruth, but I decided to search this time for her as Edith Andrews as this was the way she had signed the 1900 letter. And surprise, there she was, continuing to live in the family home at 1312 Woodland Street, Nashville, Tennessee. And this time, I learned something I had never heard before about Edith. According to the 1930 census, in addition to her 20 year old daughter Edith, there were five women, ages 26-40, each listed as a "roomer" in the house.(3) Remembering this house from many family visits there through the years, I can easily image the boarders staying probably two or three to a room in the spacious upstairs bedrooms, sharing the one upstairs bathroom.

I wondered how long Edith had been having boarders in her home so I looked through several years of the Nashville city directories available on Ancestry.com. According to the 1929 city directory, Edith was the only person listed for the 1312 Woodland Street address. Again she was the sole listing for 1931. In addition, none of the boarders were listed in the 1931 city directory which suggests that the five boarders resided in the home only in 1930.

By 1933, according to the city directory, Edith's daughter Bessie Andrews and her husband Herbert Andrews were now living with her in the family home.(4) And yes, Bessie Andrews had officially become Bessie Andrews Andrews when she married a husband who shared the same last name, a fact my uncle Herbert liked to smile about. Bessie and Herbert Andrews, along with their growing family of four children, lived with Edith until she died in 1940, and then Bessie and Herbert continued living in the family home until near the end of their lives. The family home, built according to family information in 1903, had served the Andrews families well for close to 70 years.

According to my Great Grandfather Howard Andrews' will, the house had been left to his wife Ruth Edith.(5) I also spent time looking at both Ancestry and Family Search will and probate records in hopes of finding a will for Edith following her death in 1940. Although I spend the better part of a day browsing the available online will and probate records for Davidson County, Tennessee, I was not able to find any record of a will or probate proceedings for Edith in either 1940 or 1941, the last year of accessible online records. For now, I do not know the details of how or when Bessie and Herbert became owners of the family home. Visiting there as a child, the house was always referred to as Bessie and Herbert's house. It was some years later when I began to hear stories of Edith and Howard from my mother and other family members.

Taking a closer look at Ruth Edith Smiley involved some fruitful research as I finally found that 1930 census record and learned of the boarders in her home. There was also that negative research as I still cannot locate a 1900 census record or will / probate information following her death in 1940. When I really gained with a closer connection with a Great Grandmother who, like me, dealt with selling a house, moving away from family, and raising young children in a home where her husband was away from home on business at various times, as well as making adjustments in her life following her husband's death. I am also so appreciative of the Andrews relative who had that 1900 letter Edith wrote, transcribed the letter, and shared it with other family members years ago. Census records, a letter, city directories, and court records, all part of Edith's story, all making her more real to me.

As for her mother Minerva Melvina Hammond Smiley, that will be a story for another day.

#AndrewsGenealogy #SmileyGenealogy #GenealogyResources

(1) Pennsylvania County Marriages, 1885-1950, Crawford County Marriage License Docket, license #473, W H Andrews and Edith R Smiley, m 23 Dec 1886; accessed on FamilySearch.org.
(2) Letter from R. Edith Andrews to Aunt, 9 Dec 1900, transcription in personal collection of Mary P Nelson.
(3) 1930 US census, population schedule, T626, roll 2241, Tennessee, Davidson, Nashville, p 122, dwelling 43; accessed on Ancestry.com.
(4) Polk's Nashville City Directory, 1933, p 120; accessed on Ancestry.com.
(5) Tennessee Wills and Probate Records, 1727-2008, Davidson County Tennessee, Will Book #45, 1928-1929, p 398, will of William Howard Andrews; accessed on Ancestry.com. 

My Genealogy Bullet Journal, One Year Later

What a different a year makes! My first entry in my new Genealogy Bullet Journal was made on January 1, 2017. In it, I recorded information about the family I had been researching in some JSTOR journals and that I had (finally) spent 15 minutes filing some of my pile of documents. But then, life happens.

For our family, 2017 left us pummelled by the unexpected. We were faced with the impact of the deaths of three wonderful family members, one of whom was my husband. And so, I've been on a break from research and blogging for a while. And genealogy and my genealogy bullet journal and many other parts of my normal daily life had been pushed aside. I continued to deal with probate documents, marriage certificates, deeds, titles, but now as a part of dealing with life itself.

Time to start back. Lately I have been feeling the desire to get back to researching my family and that of my husband, and my genealogy bullet journal is starting to prove helpful in ways I had not previously anticipated, including such things as

• I can look back over my last entries written months ago and pick up on that train of thought. 
• I can glance at my efforts documented in parts of 2017 and consider where I had success, what resources I may want to further explore, and whether I want to continue pursuing certain questions.
• I still have that section of possible research questions that can provide a different starting point for my research.
• My Genealogy Bullet Journal will help me corral my thoughts, especially while I am still so sporadic in my research time and efforts.

Time for Goal Setting. One of the first things I hope to do in the coming weeks is to use the Goal Setting Worksheet  developed by The Occasional Genealogist. This document, available when you subscribe to her blog, looks like it will help me focus on what I have done as well as what I hope to accomplish. My bullet journal will be just the place to record and keep this information for future reference.

Time for a new journal. With only a few blank pages remaining in my 2017 Genealogy Bullet Journal, I knew I would be needing a new journal soon after the start of 2018. Whenever I was in a craft or office supply store in the early fall, I had been looking at their journal offerings. I finally decided to purchase the TUL discbound notebook system several months ago when I found the one I wanted on sale.  I chose to move to a discbound system for the ease in adding and removing pages such as copies of maps, calendars, family record sheets, even pages from the collection section of my old Genealogy Bullet Journal. I can just trim the copy, punch holes along the side, and then add the additional pages into my new Journal without having to hand copy the information into the new journal. Admittedly, I also love the size (A5) and feel of my TUL, and the color of the cover (rose gold) is just right. And yes, I splurged and bought a special hole punch to make things easier.

Time for some changes to my journal. There is one more big change I'm planning to make with my new discbound journal. I'm actually going to consider it as two different journals, both housed in one book. I will be adding a cardstock divider between my 2-page weekly spreads and the Collections section of my journal. I've realized that my weekly work is somewhat temporary, referred to within a more recent time period while my Collections tend to be permanent, resources to which I will continually add information and use. Each of the Weekly and the Collections sections will have its own index and numbering system. I'll probably number pages in one section in black, the other in blue ink. That way should a page come loose or be removed from the journal, it should be easy to return it to its proper place. This is a change I have been mulling over for six months or more. We'll see how I like this plan by the end of 2018.

So, once again my Genealogy Bullet Journal is proving to be an important tool in my genealogy research. It has been a part of what I have done in the past year, and it will continue to be a part of what I do in the future. Even writing about my journal has given me more of a desire to venture back into research again. 

On a more personal note, my separate, personal bullet journal has also been an important part of my life as it helped me keep up with the myriad details following my husband's death, keeping up with the who, what, when, where, and why of appointments, legal documents, and to-do lists. Both journals have been part of keeping up with life. My genealogy bullet journal focuses on the past; my personal one deals primarily with the present and future. All in all, a bullet journal can be just as individual as the one who creates it and uses it. I'm proof of that.

#bulletjournal #genealogybulletjournal #genealogyresources    

Bridget Richardson Fletcher: "She being dead yet speaketh"

Old North Church, Boston
source: Wikimedia Commons

I have been accustomed to finding ministers, tavern keepers, teachers, and farmers scattered all over the branches of my family tree. But a poet and hymn writer, that was someone new to find! The bits I have gathered about my seventh GreatAunt, Bridget Richardson Fletcher, have blended into a story of a woman, her family, and life in colonial times.

Bridget Richardson was born in 1726, the fourth of Zachariah Richardson and Sarah Butterfield's ten children.(1) Although I have been unable to find any record concerning her education, she apparently learned to read and to write, as well as the knowledge of poetic form. These things were evidenced in her later life.

In February of 1745/1746 an intention to marry was recorded in the Westford, Massachusetts Church Records for Timothy Fletcher, Jr, of Westford and Bridget Richardson of Chelmsford. In the following years, according to the church records, Timothy and Bridget had seven children.(2) These children were Elijah (born 1747), Josiah (born 1749), Bridget (born 1751, apparently dying in childhood), Luce (born 1754), Jesse (born in 1757, apparently died at a young age), Bridget (born 1760), and Jese (born 1762). Seven children in 15 years is enough to keep anyone busy, but it was often the norm among colonial families.

Bridget Richardson Fletcher died on 8 June 1770, survived by her husband Timothy and five children, three of whom were under the age of 18 and were most likely still living at home. Her oldest son Elijah had just graduated from Harvard and was planning on a career in the ministry.(3) It was not unexpected to learn that her husband Timothy remarried, first in 1774 to Huldah Pearley and, following Huldah's death, to the much young Hannah Proctor in 1778.(4)

Son Elijah Fletcher was ordained into the ministry in 1773 and served as the minister of the Congregational Church of Hopkinton, New Hampshire. According to a biographer, once Rev. Elijah Fletcher began receiving a salary, one of his first deeds, following his marriage to Rebecca Chamberlain, was to arrange for the publication of a collection of his mother's poetry.(5)

Her book of poetry was published in Boston by Isaac Thomas who was the publisher of The Massachusetts Spy, an early colonial newspaper. I was able to access a copy of her book, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, on the Early American Imprints database at King University in Bristol, Virginia. The poems are listed as having been composed by "Bridget Fletcher, The wife of Timothy Fletcher, late of Wesford, deceased. She being dead yet speaketh". Included in the citation for Hymns and Spiritual Songs was this note, "The only known copy is imperfect". There was no mention, however, of the current physical location of Bridget's book.

Although Bridget Richardson Fletcher with this sole publication is not ranked among the oft-mentioned females writers in colonial America, people such as Anne Bradstreet, Mercy Otis Warren, and Phillis Wheatley, her writings continue to appear in a number of literary anthologies. A forthcoming work, American Colonial Women and Their Art, has this to say about Bridget Richardson Fletcher: (6)

Hymnographer Bridget Richardson Fletcher of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, compiled Hymns and Spiritual Songs on Several Occasions. The collection of eighty-two hymns stressed propriety, marriage, the punishment for sin, and the joys of redemption and God's grace. Hymn 36 described the virgin birth of Christ as a character asset of all women and a shield against male scorn. Hymn 70 surveyed the mutual duties of husband and wife and urged every man to prize his wife for her submission to authority."

The introduction of her book takes us clearly back into the eighteenth century as the editor (possibly Isaac Thomas) urged readers to "be ready to make allowances for the many inaccuracies of a female pen, when he considers that the advantages of females in general are but small, in comparison of those of the other sex, in point of polite learning". The editor further noted that the poems were not given titles and that some of them were not finished as "God, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to call the author from this to a world of spirits, in the meridian of life ... [after] a fever for the space of three weeks ... she having passed through many difficulties".(7) There in the book's introduction was Bridget's probable cause of death at the age of 44.

Her poems are clearly filled with religious imagery and evidences of her faith. The following poems are a few examples of her hymns and sacred songs. This poem urged Christ to take her out of darkness and from her doubts and could have been written during the time of her fever and illness.

     My Saviour dear, don't leave me here,
         In this dark wilderness,
     Pray let me come a leaning on,
         Thy sweetly thy charming breast.
     
     For thou are strong and can'st perform,
         If thou the word shouldn'st speak,
     Could I get out then with a shout
         Around the earth I'd leap.

     But fight I will with all my skill
         If God will not forsake,
     I will hold fast while life doth last,
         Lest some my crown should take.
     
Hymn XXXVI, previously mentioned, presented her idea that the dignity of a woman comes because Christ was born of a woman. The photo also shows the condition of some of the pages of this copy of her book.

As I read Bridget's poetry, I kept wondering how these poems might have been sung as hymns. In her dissertation, Dr. Karen L. Shadle explained that "these strictly metered texts were to be sung to familiar melodies".(8) This is easy to understand when I consider the various hymns in our church hymnal that are sung to the same tune. If I tried, I could probably find a suitable melody for verses such as these from Hymn LXXXII:

     A contrite heart, O Lord impart,
         A broken spirit too:
     O meet us there, and hear our pray'r,
         If by thy leave we go.
     .....
     Lord give us grace to run the race,
         Which thou hast set before,
     Lord give us faith to keep us safe,
         And bring us safe ashore.

Library, King University, Bristol, Virginia

Reflections:

• I am appreciative that I was able to have online access to Hymns and Sacred Songs at King University in Bristol, Virginia. The colonial architecture of the campus was an appropriate setting for accessing information from colonial times.
• I'm grateful that Bridget Richardson Fletcher shared her thoughts through her poetry and that her eldest son, the Rev. Elijah Fletcher, saw fit to have his mother's poetry and hymns published in 1774.
• It was good to stretch my research habits by looking into a variety of academic publications and journals. HathiTrust and the JSTOR Digital Library proved to provide a number of excellent resources in my research.
• My journey to learn about Bridget started about a year ago with a single sentence mentioning her poems, a sentence I read somewhere in something about my 7th GreatGrandparents, Zachariah Richardson and Sarah Butterfield. The more I learned about Bridget, the more I wanted to share her story so that "she being death yet speaketh".

#colonialamericagenealogy #genealogyresources #massachusettsgenealogy #richardsongenealogy #womenpoets #hymnsandsacredsongs

(1) Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988. Database and Images, Ancestry.com, (http://www.ancestry.com : 2011); citing Chelmsford, Vital Record Transcripts, p 130, Chelmsford Births.
(2) Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988. Database and Images, Ancestry.com, (http://www.ancestry.com : 2011); citing Westford, Vital Record Transcripts, various pages, Westford Births.
(3) "Ecclesiastical History", Collections, Historical and Miscellaneous and Monthly Literary Journal, vol III, 1824; accessed http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/24/1824_JohnFarmerIII.pdf.
(4) Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988. Database and Images, Ancestry.com, (http://www.ancestry.com : 2011); citing Westford, Vital Record Transcripts, Marriages, p 169.
(5) Shipton, Clifford Kenyon. Sibley's Harvard graduates : biographical sketches of those who attended Harvard College ... with bibliographical and other notes, 1873; accessed through HathiTrust.org.
(6) Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. American Colonial Women and Their Art. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017; accessed on Google Books, September 2017.
(7) Fletcher, Bridget Richardson. Hymns and Spiritual Songs on Several Occasions. Boston, Thomas, 1774; accessed through Early American Imprints, series I, #42439.
(8) Sladle, Karen L. Singing With Spirit and Understanding: Psalmody As Holistic Practice in Late Eighteenth-Century New England. Presented to faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2010.