My Heritage Pie and Bar Charts – Great-Great-Grandparents

I was busy in research mode on Saturday and didn’t take the time to look at Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun but decided to give another aspect [I find the research part fun] of genealogy fun  a try this morning. Although we have spent much time [and distance] searching for my mother’s mother’s grandparents, we have been totally unsuccessful in locating any information. Here are the names and dates of what we now know of the births, marriages [listed for each couple under the great-great-grandmothers' information]  and deaths of my great-great-grandparents:

16. William Jabez Willis was born about 1805 in South Carolina, possibly the Spartanburg vicinity. He died in Fayette County, Alabama about April 1855.

17. Amy Edith Collins was born February 14, 1826 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She married my great-grandfather after the death of his wife (her sister) in Fayette County, Alabama in about 1850. She lived as a widow for around 50 years and died in Fayette County, Alabama sometime between the 1900 and 1910 censuses.

18. John Buckner was born about 1832 in Franklin County, Tennessee. He lived in both Blount County and Fayette County, Alabama before enlisting in the 41^st Alabama Infantry for the Civil War. He died in Charleston, Bradley, Tennessee.

19. Nancy M. Foster was born in Alabama, perhaps Blount County, July 2, 1838. She and my great-grandfather married February 1, 1855 in Blount County, Alabama. She also lived in Fayette County, Alabama and Holly Springs, Marshall, Mississippi before moving to Wise County, Texas where she was living at the time of her death December 18, 1917.

20. Robert Welch was born September 3, 1833 in South Carolina and died about December of 1861 in Fayette County, Alabama.

21. Sarah A. Farquhar was about 1833 in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama and died before 1910, likely still living in Fayette County, Alabama where I last found her on a census.

22. Asa L. Sanford was born August 7, 1825 in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama and died March 24, 1907 April 24, 1907 in Moore’s Bridge, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

23. Martha Ann Jean was born February 1826 in Tennessee. She was the second wife of my great-grandfather, having married him on April 30, 1850 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, following the death of his first wife (her sister) a few months before. Martha Ann died October 20, 1911 in Moore’s Bridge, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

24. Jacob P. Lineberry was born about 1811 in Grayson County, Virginia and died May 13, 1887 in Carroll County, Virginia.

25. Piety Thomas Smith was born December 9, 1810 in Granville County, North Carolina. She married my great-great-grandfather on November 4, 1833 in Grayson County, Virginia and died in Carroll County, Virginia on October 25, 1885.

26. Thomas Harmon was born about 1819 in Carroll County, Virginia and died October 17, 1897 also in Carroll County, Virginia.

27. Delilah Davis was born about 1818 in Grayson County, Virginia. She and my great-great-grandfather were married August 15, 1838 in Carroll County, Virginia. Delilah died on November 5, 1888 in Hillsville, Carroll, Virginia.

28. Enoch M. Keithley was born April 5, 1831 in Missouri. He lived in Illinois and Wisconsin before enlisting in the Civil War in 1862. He died at Pittsburg Landing, Hardin, Tennessee from illness during the Battle at Shiloh about May 8, 1862.

29. Amy Turner was born May 15, 1835 in Sharonville, Hamilton, Ohio. She and my great-great-grandfather were married on August 29, 1852 in New Diggins, Lafayette, Wisconsin. She  died in Lewistown, Fulton, Illinois on May 16, 1912.

30 and 31 are unknown. My great-grandmother [maiden name Conn] was born in Ohio, married in Chicago, Cook, Illinois and died in either Missouri or Kansas and what we have found so far would indicate Ohio or Pennsylvania as possible locations for her parents’ births.

Birth locations of my great-great-grandparents:

South Carolina – 3
Alabama – 3
Tennessee – 2
Virginia – 3
North Carolina – 1
Missouri – 1
Ohio – 1
Pennsylvania [guess] – 1

I thought it might be interesting to see what changes migratory patterns caused. Death locations of my great-great-grandparents were [two totally unknown]:

Alabama – 6
Tennessee – 2 [Civil War Casualties]
Virginia – 4
Texas – 1
Illinois – 1

The Joy of the Hunt

It’s a good thing I enjoy solving puzzles and tracking down minute details because that is clearly what it takes to answer questions of family history and lineage. There are any number of difficulties or crazinesses in historical records that can stymie a search. Problems as seemingly insignificant as spelling and penmanship; or use of first names, middle names and nicknames in censuses from one year to the next; or moving from location to location; or misrepresented birth dates/ages can make the search more difficult.

I’ve been searching for information on my great-grandmother’s brother, William Rufus Buckner, off and on for a couple of years. I’ve had a particularly difficult time finding information on him even though I’d discovered him early on in Wise County, Texas in the 1910 census. Because Ancestry.com searches broadly in terms of surnames, ages and locations, you can sometimes find records you wouldn’t otherwise pick up. On the other hand, because it’s so broad you often have too many to take the time to look through. Heritage Quest searches way too specifically [not even an option for a wildcard] and there is no way to account for those flukes in spelling, age or location other than in specific searches, many of which you could not even hazard a guess.

What I had learned about William Rufus Buckner during the past couple of years from multiple sources was:

He was born in about 1858 as the second child of John and Nancy M. Foster Buckner [as to the search for verification as to who Nancy was, see previous blogs on Surname Saturday - Buckner nee Foster and Follow Up Buckner nee Foster.

1860 census for John & Nancy Buckner and Mary, William and Sarah

His father had joined Company I of the 41^stAlabama Infantry and died in Tennessee as a result of illness. Some men have 12 and more status cards in their files while John only has five, one of which is made out for James, but since the information is generally the same as that for John, the archival people have filed it with John. Even the cards have differing information on them; two (one Jno, usual abbreviation for John, and one Jas) indicate he died September 18, 1862 while one (John) states September 12, 1862, although all three have the location as Charleston, Tennessee. A transcription of a card that is not visible on Footnote is available at the Alabama Department of Archives and History website shows Nancy filed for a widow’s pension. There was a similar notation on the card for John’s brother, Jesse W. Buckner, that John Buckner, father, had filed a claim (which had been mailed to Blount County). BH Williams was the probate judge for Fayette County at the time, presumably a copy of the documentation would have been at the courthouse had it not burned. I had hoped to see application papers when we visited, but nothing was available, apparently both claims for monetary support were denied, perhaps because both deaths were from illness rather than battle injuries.At the time of the 1866 Alabama Census, he and his mother and three siblings [Mary Jane, Sarah and Medora] lived in the vicinity of his grandparents [Anthony Edward and Mary King Foster]; uncle, Anthony Edward Foster; future brother-in-law, James Franklin Willis; and long-time neighbor Joshua Watson and his family. A website listing Fayette County marriages listed a marriage for Nancy Buckner to Joshua Watson in 1868 and cemetery records confirmed the death of his wife Phoebe in 1867. The 1870 census listed Joshua and Nancy and four Buckner children plus their first child, John B. Watson. As usual, there was a dilemma with that record. Mary Jane, who would have been a 14-year-old female at the time, was listed as M.J., a 12-year-old male, but since Mary Jane married two years later in the home of Joshua Watson, there did seem to be a connection between them.

1870 Census, Joshua & Nancy Watson with John B. Watson, M.J., R., S.M. & Nedora Buckner

I had a difficult time finding any record on the family for quite some time, but eventually found a census record for Holly Springs, Mississippi that showed Joshua and Nancy and their son, John B. Watson, plus three additional Watson children born after June of 1870. Mary Jane had married James Franklin Willis by that time, but the remaining Buckner children were also there in Holly Springs having been listed by the census enumerator as Rufus Watson, Sarah Watson and Dora Watson, which was why I’d been unable to locate them. I’d been unable to locate Nancy because the enumerator had listed her age as 60 instead of 42.

1880 Census - Joshua & Nancy, Rufus, Sarah, Dora, John, Etta, Walter and Daugherty Watson

With the discovery of a marriage record for William R. Buckner and Martha Ann Holliman for 1892 I was then able to track him to Wise County, Texas in 1910 with two children, Grover C. and Lona Belle.

1910 Census - William R. & Martha A. Buckner with Grover C. and Lona B. Buckner in Wise County, Texas.

So far, the listings for William Rufus had been: William Buckner for the 1860 census; R. Buckner for the 1870 census and Rufus Watson for the 1880 census. The 1910 census was for William R. Buckner with a wife named Martha A. Buckner who had been married 17 years [corresponding to the 1892 marriage record] and had two children. The bad news for that is that it makes the searching more difficult; the good news is I picked up both first and middle names for him in the process.

After many searches, I finally located a 1930 census for Rufus in Oklahoma where he was living with a son I didn’t know about – Vester. This listing was for Rufus R. Buckner. This son’s age would put his birth at about 1888, which was four years before the marriage of Rufus and Martha Ann, which led me to a further search of Fayette County marriages.

1930 Census - Vester Buckner with his family, father-in-law, and father, Rufus R. Buckner in Tillman County, Oklahoma.

I, of course, now had a time frame for the death of Martha Ann – before 1930. I searched for and found an earlier marriage between Rufus Buckner and A. J. Collins that took place in 1883 in Fayette County, Alabama. The fact that Rufus married again by 1892 would indicate A. J. died before that time and that Vester was the child of Rufus and A.J. I found no other records for Vester Buckner. However, by tracking the children in that 1930 record, I found other records that added the initials G. S. to Vester’s name – I thought Vester could be short for Sylvester but I found nothing to support that. With the 1890 census being burned, the 1900 census for Rufus would certainly be a help in adding to what I knew about him.

Last month I found evidence of some Buckner burials in the Frederick Cemetery in Frederick, Oklahoma; unfortunately, when I sought to find them on the transcription of that cemetery, all names from Br to the Cs were missing. I sent an email to the website administrator who said she was a new administrator but would ask the previous administrator. That person looked and was surprised to find my observation to be correct and he supplied me with an Excel spreadsheet of the missing people where I found not only the Buckner people I was looking for, but I found that elusive Rufus Buckner listed as well. Although I didn’t find his wife, Martha, I was a little suspicious that a Mary Ann Buckner who died in 1929 [before the 1930 census] and buried near him might be worth a closer look. My daughter, Kay, and I took a trip to Wise County, Texas and over to Tillman County, Oklahoma in April to see what records and burials we might find. We found the headstone for Rufus to be a double headstone with his wife, Mary Ann – back to that confusing use of nicknames. Apparently any number of females with names beginning with ‘M’ went by Mary, while those whose name was actually Mary often went by Polly or Molly [or Pollie or Mollie].

Rufus and Mary Buckner headstone

Yesterday I decided to return to the Heritage Quest site and search for the first name of William in both Oklahoma and Texas. Obviously there were going to be a lot of Williams in Texas – too many to look at as well as the possibility of having to search for Wm, Rufus or a combination of initials. I set limiters of an age range and being born in Alabama and hoped the census enumerators had been reasonably accurate for a change. I began by selecting Williams who lived in Wise County, Texas and found a William R. Ruckner. I was rewarded with a correct hit on that one. Even though Ancestry.com searches broadly, it would never have tried a substitution of Ruckner for Buckner, even though they rhyme.

This record provided verification that the 1930 census relationship with Vester was a correct one because the 1900 census listed a son born about 1888 – Guy S. Buckner [further research found Guy Sylvester Buckner in the California death index], along with Grover C. and Lone B. Buckner [close enough for the spelling capacity and/or penmanship of the census enumerators]. There was also a bonus of another son I hadn’t yet discovered, John H. Buckner, born about 1884 – a whole new thread to pull.

1900 Census - William R. & Martha A. Ruckner and John H., Guy S., Grover C. and Lone B.

Although that record gave me new information and corroboration, it also created more questions. For example, to the question “Mother of how many children,” Martha Ann answered 5 and noted that all 5 were still living. Based on marriage records, only two of the four listed children should be Martha’s and since the marriage record listed her under her maiden name it is not likely she had three children from a previous marriage who weren’t living with her. On the other hand, since A. J. died when her sons were quite young and Martha would have been their mother for eight years, she may well have responded to the question in terms of caretaking. However, it’s more difficult to wipe away their response as to the length of their marriage – 18 years instead of the 8 expected from their marriage record. Based on what I’ve seen of enumerator’s accuracy in census records, perhaps Martha or Rufus replied eight years to the question, but since the oldest child was sixteen, the enumerator decided he must have not heard the whole answer and filled in logically with eighteen. Fortunately, I have the 1910 census that indicates their marriage was  of 17 years’ duration rather than the 28 I might have expected if I hadn’t had the 1892 marriage record along with the 1910 listing of years of marriage.

After yesterday’s find of the 1900 record I have a new child I was unaware of to research. Additionally, any way I look at it, I’m still missing a fifth child who was alive at least as long as 1900, one most likely born between 1885 and 1891. Fortunately, I really enjoy the hunt itself, so back to work.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: Week 12 ~ Movies

I was raised by a mother who loved movies. In a blog written for the 68th Carnival of Genealogy as a tribute to women, I wrote that my mother spent all her money on movies and concerts. She told me she saw every movie as well as every opera singer that came to Oklahoma City. With very little education, mother spoke impeccable English, sang hundreds of songs and arias learned completely by hearing them in movies and on recordings or the radio and she had a personal style of elegance learned mostly from watching movies.

As a small child, mother introduced me to her love affair with movies by taking me to see such early Disney feature-length cartoons as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi and Song of the South. Like my mother, I learned the songs from those movies. Mother bought me the 1950′s album of Snow White. My brother, Mickey, talked about listening to that album, narrated by Dennis Day, on our record player (he’s six years younger than me and hadn’t seen the movie at that time). I still have the record though the front of the album cover is gone as well as the 24-page color booklet that came with it. I loved that album and listened to it for perhaps 15-20 years – the records are almost slick. I particularly enjoyed I’m Wishing [Snow White's duet/echo from the wishing well] and One Song, Someday My Prince Will Come, Whistle While You Work, and Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go. I have to say, some of those Disney songs shaped my positive outlook on life and my work ethic, including these from Snow White, but also tunes like Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah from Song of the South.

Saturday afternoon at the movies.

By the time I was about ten, I lived in a  neighborhood where all the kids went to the movies every Saturday. We would walk over to the Redskin Theater at SW 29^th and Western to be with other friends and watch a double feature movie. Most of those Saturday movies were westerns or comedies so I saw the Bowery Boys movies, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tim Holt, Hopalong Cassidy, Tarzan, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. There were also shorts with the Three Stooges and Our Gang comedies as well as cartoons, such as Mr. Magoo and The Road Runner as well as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, and Elmer Fudd as well as the other Disney or Warner Brothers cartoon characters. My favorite actor when I was ten to twelve was Tim Holt, though I also liked Richard Green, and my favorite actress was Yvonne DeCarlo whom I thought was beautiful.

Every Saturday was a great day. The theaters were filled with kids and we were there from about noon to 5:00. I would have enough money to buy a drink and a candy bar (probably a quarter) and, due to the length of time I was in the theater, it needed to be something that would last a long time, so my favorites were the chewy Milk Duds, Bit-O-Honey and Tootsie Rolls. My other favorite, Milky Way, didn’t last long enough so was rarely my Saturday afternoon choice.

A movie I particularly remember was Samson and Delilah. Although it came out in 1949, I don’t think I saw it as a first-run movie. I would guess I was in junior high, maybe 1952 or 1953, when it was shown at the Capitol Theater at 2510 S Robinson, which was only two to three blocks from our house [Doug Dawgz blog has loads of great pictures and post cards from earlier years and I’ve included both an exterior and an interior photo from his website taken in the 1930s when it was still the Circle Theater]. I loved that movie – Hedy Lamarr was absolutely gorgeous as the sensuous [I doubt I had a real clue as to what that might mean] Delilah but I also thought Angela Lansbury was beautiful in a more pure way. I still remember my feelings as I watched it – feelings of loss as Angela Lansbury’s character was killed, and feelings of confused amazement that Samson would alter everything he believed in just to be with Delilah and my wonder over the loss of his power as well as the return of his strength in order to bring down the Philistine’s idol. I even remember where I sat in the theater; I sat on the left side of the theater (right side of photo) about 1/3 of the way back.

I associate movies with my mother and never with my father, but as I watched an old movie on television that starred Ann Sheridan, I remembered him telling me she was his favorite actress, which implies he went to movies, at least in the 30s and perhaps early 40s. Although I don’t remember ever going to a movie as a family, I also don’t remember going with mother either, even though she told me she took me to see any number of the movies I mentioned earlier. I remember the emotional aspects of seeing Bambi –my tears when Bambi’s mother died – and the cuteness of Bambi trying to get up and walk as a new born, and even the joyfulness of Thumper and Bambi’s friendship ~ just nothing about the theater or mother’s presence. I also have no memories of Snow White other than those that could easily be connected to the record and accompanying picture book, even though, once again, mother told me she took me to see it. Pinocchio is another one I saw when it came out and I have some recollections of watching it – particularly my sense of impending danger when those boys lured Pinocchio into doing something he knew not to do – but those recollections could just as easily be recollections of seeing it at a later time – on TV perhaps. Each of those movies I mentioned was originally made either before I was born or when I was much too young to have watched a movie, so clearly mother took me to see them at a time of re-release. Song of the South is probably the first movie I saw as a first run movie – it came out in 1946, though again my recollection doesn’t include any remembrance of mother’s presence or a theater. Song of the South was a wonderful movie that has been pulled in the United States with no intention of it ever being seen again due to some people’s interpretation that blacks were not being shown in a positive light or that some positive aspects of slavery could be inferred [it is available in some other countries but I think the formats require some sort of conversion to work on our machines]. The Br’er Rabbit stories were a collection of African-American folklore compiled by Joel Chandler Harris and were depicted in both the book and the movie as being told by an old former male slave known as Uncle Remus to the white children in the southern family that had owned him prior to the Civil War. Hiding those movies does not negate the fact that slavery was a real aspect of American history, that the stories were delightful, and that Disney’s movie version was fabulous and, in my opinion, its lack of availability is a great loss to both adult’s and children’s viewing pleasure, regardless of ethnicity.

By the time I was a teenager, besides ‘cruising Main,’ the other thing to do on date nights was go to a movie. On my first date, I went to see Not As A Stranger at the Centre Theater in downtown  Oklahoma City. Although that theater is no longer in existence, I believe at least portions of the building were incorporated into the current Museum of Art that houses both permanent and rotating art collections as well as a large Chihuly glass collection.

In the mid-1950s, cities had not yet begun their urban sprawl and downtown areas were still places where people got dressed up to go shopping as well as for a special night at the movies. Movie premieres were a big event and I remember seeing a midnight preview of Good Morning, Miss Dove at the Criterion and seeing Oklahoma!, which had to be seen at the State Theater because it was the only theater equipped for showing a movie using the new Todd-AO. One of my choir director’s favorite musicals was Carousel, and at his recommendation I went to see that movie when it came out.

There were, of course, the mostly teenage interest movies and I saw most if not all of them. That included Elvis Presley movies made prior to my marriage, Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause.

Another popular form of movie viewing in the 1950s, at least in reasonable weather, was the drive-in movie and I had my fair share of drive-in movie dates as well as whole groups packed into cars and meeting up at the drive-in. Although many of the movies I saw at drive-ins were B movies, I also saw The Ten Commandments at a drive-in.

As much as I was raised on movies and truly enjoy them, after my marriage, a night at the movies was a special treat – although a movie with special appeal to the interests of my husband was generally an exception. We saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at a premier in Hollywood while we were living in Long Beach. We also saw Star Wars, and Superman. We went to see Airplane!, which was a great disappointment at the time because it was a comedy and airplanes were a serious interest to my husband – I have since come to appreciate its humor. Other movies I managed to see in the theater during my marriage included The Sound of Music and Funny Girl, as well as taking our daughter to see Jungle Book.

Currently, I have a small group of female friends that occasionally get together for a movie and I remain ready to go whenever an opportunity presents itself. Otherwise, I wait to see it on television since, for me, a movie in a theater is should be a shared experience.

Saturday Night Genealogical Fun: John Galen Singleton

Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun assignment was to follow Chris Staat’s Freaky Friday: Random Research Reports research suggestion:

1. Go to The Random Name Generator and click the red “Generate Name” button at the top of the screen

2. Go to Ancestry.com and enter your generated name in the search box on the main search page. [Randy's add: If you don't have Ancestry.com, go to http://www.familysearch.org/ and do it there - it's free.]

3. From the results, your research target will be the first census result for your generated name.

4. Using whatever online resources are at your disposal, see what else you can discover about your random person and write about it. It can be a formal report complete with footnotes, or just a “research story” about what you tried, problems you overcame, or success you had. Maybe you want to create a research plan for practice?

5. Post about it on your blog or wherever you wish, and link here to tell Chris about it. Tell Randy about it too as a comment here or a comment on Facebook or Twitter.

My Results: The Random Name Generator came up with Galen Singleton. When I put that name into Ancestry, the first name listed was John Galen Singleton and was from the California Death Index, which gave me his name and Social Security number, birth and death dates as well as birth and last residence locations. He was born April 30, 1923 in Oklahoma, which is where I was born and where I currently live; he died June 20, 1997 in Los Angeles, California. One other clue given there was his mother’s maiden Name – Kasling.

The next person listed was Galen Ray Singleton, but our assignment was to pick the first name. Right below the second person listed was a photograph of a John Galen Singleton from someone’s family tree. When I clicked on that family tree, I discovered the second John Galen Singleton was the father of my John Galen Singleton.

According to that family tree, John Galen’s father was born in Marshall, Saline, Missouri on February 19, 1893. John’s 1917 World War I Draft Registration listed his occupation as self-employed painter doing odd jobs. That occupation was reiterated on the 1930 census. Again, according to the family tree, John died March 19, 1961 in Compton, Los Angeles, California.

John Galen’s mother was Elizabeth Luisa Kasling who was born September 20, 1894 in Germany. According to the 1930 census, both Elizabeth’s parents were also born in Germany and Elizabeth arrived in this country in 1908. Elizabeth married John Galen Singleton on July 25, 1917 in Fort Smith, Buchanan, Arkansas. Elizabeth died December 22, 1980 in Lakewood, Los Angeles, California.

Although John and Elizabeth married in Arkansas, their daughter, Anna M., was born in Oklahoma in about 1921 and son, John Galen, Jr., was also born in Oklahoma in 1923. Their son, Edward, was born about 1926 in Missouri and their daughter, Addie, was born in California about 1928. By 1930, the family was living in Montebello, Los Angeles, California. Another brother James Leroy Singleton was born in Los Angeles, California in 1936. He died in Las Vegas, ten years before his younger brother, John, also died in Las Vegas. Edward died in 2002 in Seal Beach, California and Annie died in 2008 in Fontana, California. John apparently, according to the family tree, had two other sisters who are still living.

The birth locations of the children in Oklahoma, Missouri and California would parallel the Great Dust Bowl migration to California of the late 1920s and early 1930s. With John Galen, Sr. being a self-employed painter, I would suppose his earnings during that difficult time period were pretty meager. Since the whole family remained in the west, it would appear that part of the country provided a better living than what they had found in the Midwest.

John Galen Singleton, Jr. served in the US Navy during World War II beginning on December 29, 1942. As one who served in the military, his burial location was reported by the U.S. Veteran’s Grave Index. He was interred on June 25, 1997 at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.

John Galen Singleton, Jr. died in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada at the age of 74.

The potential rest of the story: There was also a third John Galen Singleton born March 6, 1952 in Los Angeles, which was the county where the other two John Galen’s were living and would have been an appropriate time frame for John Galen Singleton, Jr. to have married and begin raising a family. John Galen Singleton III’s mother’s maiden name was Wyatt.

Mary Isabella Welch

This afternoon I was recording census information on my great-grandfather’s brother, James Alexander Welch, including tracking his children and their marriages. In that process, I always search a page or two either side of the page on which I find the family member. That often provides insight into other family members and/or clues to follow.

My great-grandfather, William Thomas Welch married Mollie Sanford and as I looked over the 1910 census page on which James Welch’s son, Murphey, was listed, I noted a Charlie Sanford living as a boarder. In previous censuses, I had noted some proximity of Welch families to Sanford families, particularly her brother John Rufus Sanford, so I went back a page to see who this Sanford was living with. He was living in the home of Jahue A. and Isibell Maddox, which rang no bells until I thought a little about her first name.

My great-grandfather had a sister named Mary Isabella Welch who was born about 1858 and whom I’d not been able to find a viable marriage for. Other researchers found a marriage for Mary Elizabeth Welch to Taylor Tolliver and assumed the Mary I. Welch of the 1860 census was just an error. Even when I found the administration papers for their father’s estate that named each child with a full name, including hers as Mary Isabella, some researchers still thought Elizabeth and Isabella sounded enough alike that the clerk recording the information could have misheard Isabella instead of Elizabeth. However, once I discovered the second marriage for their mother and found Mary listed as Isabella on the 1870 census, I could no longer believe the Welch/Tolliver marriage rationale.

Consequently, when I looked at the age of this Isibell Maddox, noting she was born about 1858, and her proximity to a Sanford and a Welch, this was too big a coincidence for me to ignore. So, I started a new search for Jahue and Isabel Maddox to see what I might find.

I found a 1900 census for the couple in the same location [Stonewall, Fayette, Alabama], but this time she was listed as Mary I. Maddox. There was a more interesting piece of information – Mary Isabel’s mother was living with them. My Mary Isabella’s mother’s name was Sarah A. Farquhar Welch Jackson who was born in about 1833. This Mary Isabel’s mother’s name was Sara A. Edmondson who was born about 1833. I knew from the 1880 census that Mr. Jackson had died between 1870 and 1880, so Sarah Jackson was a widow and could easily have remarried within that 20 to 30-year-period.

Next step was to look for marriage information for Jahue and Mary Isabel[la] to see if I could find a maiden name for her. Based on the 1900 census, I knew that Jahue and Mary Isabella had married about 1883. I found a Fayette County marriage for November 12, 1882 for J. A. Maddox and Mary T. Welch. Because all documentation in this time period was done with handwriting, it is frequently difficult to discern whether an initial is an I. or a J. or a T. because many people wrote those characters similarly.

With all of these factors – first name, middle name, maiden name, birth year, mother’s first name, middle initial, and birth year, proximity to a Welch family and a Sanford family, I believe I found my missing great-grand aunt and the last of my great-grandfather’s siblings. There are still questions to be answered, including that this 1900 census said Sarah had borne 5 children of whom 4 were living – meaning there was another sibling (no clue as to whether this was another child of Robert Welch or one she had while married to Mr. Jackson). I still also would like to find a marriage between Sarah A. Jackson and an unknown Edmondson, photographs of all of them, as well as burial locations for her and Mary Isabella, but there are surely more clues to find and trails to follow.

UPDATE: Let’s Have a Party!

In reviewing one of the responses to Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I found another method to search my software for specific information. This method netted 95 people born on June 22, including two born on the same day that I was. Four of those were duplicates [an excuse to clean up some of the database] and once I eliminated those not directly related to me (this is a database I combined with that of a 4th cousin once removed to get the combined database on one part of my father’s family that now has 89,605 people in it), I was still left with 42 people to invite to my party – well, one of those really isn’t directly related but since he was actually born on the same day as me, how could I not invite him! Here is my guest list:

Since several of these people are no longer living and the party will therefore have to be a ‘ghost party,’ I’m thinking it’s appropriate to have this party on Halloween rather than waiting for June. So, so pick a graveyard nearby and – Let’s Party!

Shared Birthdays

Today is Randy Seaver’s birthday and his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge is to find people in your genealogy database who share your birthday. Here’s what’s in ours:

1) Elizabeth Harmon June 22, 1824 – Elizabeth was the wife of my 1st cousin three times removed.

2) Lewis Allen Lineberry June 22, 1896 – Lewis was my 2nd cousin once removed

3) Thelma Elizabeth Brown June 22, 1912 – Thelma was the aunt of my ex-husband. Thelma died the month I was born and her only child, Bill, currently lives across the street from me.

4) Alice Lee Lineberry June 22, 1925 – Alice was my 2nd cousin once removed

Although living people don’t show up in my daughter’s online database, I know my son-in-law, Keith, and I share our June 22 birthday.

I use the free version of a database and it is restricted in several functions, including the calendar function. My daughter has uploaded her database to a website that has a feature called Dates and Anniversaries. It’s set up so that everyday when you click on the feature it lists everyone with that birth date, anniversary date, burial date, or any other event associated with that day. In addition to this automatic feature, you can select a specific month and day to choose what you want to see, which I did this evening. Once I had the names from Kay’s website, I then used another database with a functional relationship calculator so I could quickly determine the relationship between those me and those ancestors who shared my birthday.

The website Kay used to create her website is TNG. Her website is K Bauman Tree House and can be accessed here. I’ve used the Dates and Anniversaries feature almost dailyever since she set up the site and love using it.