Friday, September 26, 2014

The Tale of a House

Vaughan Family Home, LaGrange, Georgia
personal collection
 Once upon a time, my Great Grandfather, Albert Bell Vaughan, decided it was finally time to build a house for his family.  After years of living in various church parsonages and temporary homes from Georgia to Texas and back, LaGrange, Georgia, became their home in 1902.  At that time Dr. Vaughan was called to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church in LaGrange and served the church in this capacity for a number of years.  In addition, he was also the president of Southern Female College in LaGrange for several years.

A 1912 city directory listed the family residence as being on Vernon Road.  Sometime between 1912 and 1920, the family built this home located on Park Avenue in LaGrange; the family was listed as residing at this Park Avenue house in the 1920 census.

As the photo above shows, Dr. Vaughan's study was originally in the right front corner of the second flour.  Later, the family expanded the porch at the left and turned the enclosed area into his study.

Vaughan Family Home, ca 1970s



Dr. Albert Bell Vaughan's study
Following his death in 1930, the family kept his study just as he had left it.  The house, in turn, was left to his widow, my Great Grandmother Georgia Camp Vaughan, who lived in the house until her death in 1934.  According of copies of LaGrange City Directories accessed through Ancestry.com, sisters Clara and Louise Vaughan then lived in the family home until Louise's marriage in the mid 1940s. 

In the early 1950s the other children of Albert Bell Vaughan and Georgia Camp Vaughan appeared to have each released or sold any claim to the house.  Through a series of warranty deeds and quit claim deeds signed by her sisters, sister-in law, sister's children and brother, Clara Vaughan became the sole owner of the house.  These transactions were all recorded in the Troup County, Georgia Grantor/Grantee Deed Indexes also accessed on Ancestry.com.  The entire process took almost two years for the documents from all parties to be signed and recorded.

The Legal Dictionary found on FreeDictionary.com proved helpful to me as I read over the recordings of the various documents.  These definitions clarified the transactions:


Grantee  An individual to whom a transfer or conveyance of property is made (buyer).
Grantor  An individual who conveys or transfers ownership of property (seller).
Quitclaim Deed  A legal instrument by which the owner of a piece of real property (grantor) transfers his or her interest to a recipient, called the grantee.  The owner terminates his or her right and claim to the property, allowing the claim to transfer to the grantee (buyer).
Warranty Deed   A type of deed in which the grantor (seller) guarantees that he or she holds clear title to a piece of real estate and has the right to sell it to the grantee (buyer).

Clara continued to live in the family home until her death in 1979.  Following her death, the home was sold in the 1980s.

Like many old family homes, just looking at pictures of this home brings back many memories of time spent there as I was growing up.  The researcher in me also appreciated having a reason to learn a little more about the transfer of property.  And, I was especially glad I looked at the new records section on Ancestry.  Otherwise, I would never have found all the digitized records from Troup County, Georgia which enabled me to explore property records concerning the Vaughan family home. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Tuesday’s Tips --- Where Is It? Organizing My Laptop Files


Flickr Puzzle 2 By Willi Heidelbach
via Wikimedia Commons

About once a year, I take a serious look at the organization of my genealogy files on my laptop computer.  I’m usually spurred on to this task because I’m looking for something, something I know is there but just can’t find.  That is where I found myself last week.

Looking closely at my laptop, I found genealogy files everywhere.   In Pictures, Downloads, and Word documents.   In Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, My Scans, e-mails, and more.  I needed to have this wide variety of files in one central file. 

Previously I had a Genealogy File in my saved Word Documents and a Genealogy File in my Pictures Library.  That had been enough for several years.  Now that I have been saving more and more genealogy things to my laptop, these files were growing.  In addition, I had also gotten into the habit of saving downloads and imported materials with the name suggested from the original source.  It was time for some changes. 

The Organized Genealogist Group on facebook has an ongoing discussion of tips for digital file organization.  Some of them I had even downloaded.  The ongoing thread of the discussions stresses two simple points:

  • Use consistency in file names
  • Organize in the way that fits with how you think.

Over the weekend, I was able to go from files scattered across my computer to having things organized in one place.  Here are the steps I followed using the Windows 7 structure of my laptop.

Step 1:  Set up a Library titled “Genealogy Laptop”.  This is now my one place to save anything related to genealogy - photos, copies of records, maps, e-mails, anything.

Step 2:  Establish a consistent format for labeling my files.
  • For a file related to a person: 
    • Last name, First name – descriptor (ie, grave marker, photo, 1860 census, WWI Draft Registration Card, etc.  If I have more than one photo, they are numbered photo 1, photo 2, etc.)  .
    • Files which covered multiple family members such as family group photos, copies of a family tree, etc, are labeled with just the family name, ex: Camp Family – photo 1
    • Since some records for married women (such as a pension application) contain only a women’s married name, I labeled these files with her maiden Last name, First name, MARRIED NAME in caps
  • For a file not related to a person: 
    • Type of file – descriptor.  For example: Template – Research Log  or  Book – Title of book
    • Geographical files are labeled by name of the state:  example:  Georgia – Counties, Towns, and History

Step 3:  Label every genealogy related file I came across in looking through the file structure of my computer.   Admittedly it took looking back over the trees in Family Tree Maker to know how to correctly label the files for a number of married women.  After labeling all the files found in one section, I moved them to the Genealogy Laptop Library (GLL).  For e-mails and a few miscellaneous files, I ended up having to make a copy to move the file to the GLL.  Within a few hours I had hundreds of labeled files arranged in one alphabetical list in the GLL.  I was surprised to see the number of files (mainly photos) which were duplicates.  Some deleting trimmed my number of files

 
Labeled files after move into the Genealogy Laptop Library
   


Step 4:  Using Family Tree Maker, I generated a Bow Tie Family Tree.  This quickly provided me with the names of my 16 2nd Great Grandparents.  In the GLL I created a folder for each of these 16 families.  I followed this same step to create folders for each of my husband’s 16 2GGs.

Family and Topic folders for my labeled files


Step 5:  Since I had previously labeled all people files last name first, it was a simple task to cut and past all people files into the corresponding family folder.  Once inside the family folder, I could see all files for a specific family member and know immediately if it were a photo, a census record, or other document.

Labeled files in the Camp Family folder


Step 6:  Back-up the Genealogy Laptop Library.  I didn’t want to lose all of my work!

Lessons Learned:  Now that my system is in place, in the future it will be easy to label a file correctly when I save it.  Then I will save it in the appropriate folder.  As a friend says, “easy-peasy”.  It turned out to be a simple project to complete, and definitely worth the time.  Plus, when I do my monthly backup of my family tree software, it is easy to also backup the entire Genealogy Laptop Library.



Thursday, September 11, 2014

Thankful Thursday: Naming a New Baby

By Photographer "Roberts of Llandrindod Wells" [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons
Last Sunday was Grandparents Day.  What a perfect day for the christening of our youngest grandchild.  Along with all the holy and joyful moments shared with family members, I later pondered on two thoughts related to celebrating our family stories.

This newest grandchild carries the names of his father, a maternal Grandfather, and a paternal Great Grandfather.  He will grow up knowing his father and Grandfather, having his own stories to share of special times.  It will be through pictures and family stories that he will come to know his paternal GreatGrandfather.  If the rest of us do our part, this little one will come to know a skilled craftsman, sharer of family stories, and teller of country yarns, his GGrandfather Nelson.  He will get to know GGrandfather Nelson as a person, not just as the middle name on his birth certificate or another name on a family tree.

A few days prior to the family christening, I had been at the local university doing more rainy day research.  After looking for the books on my To Do List, I started browsing the shelves.  There in the stacks I saw a copy of The Registers of North Farnham Parish.(1)  The book contained transcriptions from the early 1700s 
of church records for births, marriages, and deaths in North Farnham Parish, Richmond County, Virginia, home to many members of the Tarpley family.   

The Registers book provided me with additional documentation about a number of the Tarpley children.   There on one page were the names and birth dates of six of the eight children of my 6GreatGrandparents James Tarpley and Mary Camp Tarpley;  their other two children were listed on the following page.  For a number of these Tarpley children, this meant that I finally had day/month/year birth dates.



Children of James and Mary Tarpley, highlighted in red


Granted, these transcriptions of church registers are derivative documents, secondary sources, but they do provide a lot of family information.  I’m thankful that these old registers exist.  I'm thankful that someone took the time to transcribe them and publish them.  It ended up being yet another rainy day surprise for me.


(1)  Standford, George Harrison.  The Registers of North Farnham Parish 1663-1814 and Lunenburg Parish 1783-1800 Richmond County Virginia,  Fredricksburg, VA: George Harrison Sanford King, 1966.



Monday, September 1, 2014

Marriage Can Lead to a Lot of Things ...



Let me just say up front - There were a lot of marriages between the Tarpley family and the Camp family back in Virginia in the 1700s.  And many people in the two families were named Mary or James or John or Thomas, so biblical.  And it takes repeatedly looking at the family tree to keep everyone separate.

It all seemed to start back in 1733 (or 1734 depending on which record you use) when James Tarpley married Mary Camp.(1) (2)  They were my 6GGrandparents.  James Tarpley and Mary Camp eventually had eight children, four of whom married members of the Thomas Camp family.  The four Tarpley siblings married four children of Mary Camp's nephew Thomas Camp, often referred to as Thomas Camp III.  This nephew Thomas Camp III was the son of Mary Camp's (much) older brother Thomas Camp II. This meant that each Tarpley child who married a Camp child was marrying his or her first cousin once removed.  Today this type of marriage is illegal in many states, but it was not that uncommon several hundred years ago in this country.

With names so common, it took some looking at a variety of resources to be sure I have the actual people who were my ancestors and relatives.  Usually I rely upon databases or transcriptions of marriage records, but for the Tarpley-Camp marriages there was also a lot of information found on applications filed for membership in some of the lineage societies.  Online images and databases for The Colonial Dames of America, Daughters of the American Revolution, and Sons of the American Revolution provided helpful names of the bride, groom, and parents as well as dates.  

The four Tarpley-Camp marriages were:
  • Mary Camp married Thomas Tarpley on 3 April 1759 (2)
  • John Camp married Mary Minnie Tarpley on 1 January 1764 (3)
  • Thomas Camp IV married Nancy Anne Tarpley in 1768 (2)
  • Nathaniel Camp married Winnifred Tarpley in 1770 (4) 
For years the Camp family has been documented by a number of genealogists and family historians.  The Camp-Kemp Family History by Robert Neville Mann and Catherine Cleek Mann is often referred to in articles concerning the Camp family.  Back in the 1920s and 1930s there was a The Camp Family Bulletin which provided a place for genealogists and family historians to post findings about the family.  Locating and reading these resources is now high on my Genealogy To-Do List.

Meanwhile, I've found some additional helpful resources online. Elroy Christenson's Family Records web site presents an impressive amount of resources on a number of families, among them the Camp and Tarpley families.  Professional genealogist Nathaniel Lane Taylor includes The Kamp Papers, volume II by Gayle O Kamp on Taylor's web site.  A final helpful web site was that of the Lawson DNA Group.  It turns out there were a number of connections between the Tarpleys and the Lawsons in Richmond County, Virginia in the early 1700s.  The Lawson web site contains transcriptions of Richmond County documents which show both the legal and the family relationships the Tarpleys had with a number of families.  All three web sites were helpful in learning more about the Tarpley-Camp marriages and their families.

In addition to leading me to study some new-to-me online resources, my search for information about the Tarpley-Camp marriages provided me with enough printouts that I've started a new family folder for the Tarpleys.  New relatives, new resources, even a new Family Folder.  After all, marriage does lead to a lot of new things.

(1) Jeanne Mitchell Jordan Tabb, compiler.  Ancestor Lineages of Members Texas Society National Society Colonial Dames Seventeenth Century.  Baltimore, MD : Genealogical Publishing Co, c1992; accessed on Ancestry.com.
(2) Kamp, Gayle O.  The Kamp Papers, vol. II.  Indianapolis, IN: c1986; accessed on Nathan Lane Taylor web site, www.nltaylor.net.
(3) Supplemental Membership Application, Harrell Case Fountain, #76573, Georgia, on John Camp, approved 30 Nov 1953; accessed on Ancestry.com  
(4) U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900, database, Ancestry.com.