We had a short visit to the Smyrna City Library today and I have to say their genealogy section is quite impressive for such a small library. I was also able to do a couple of quick searches on their ProQuest databases. I'm not sure why I can't get the Atlanta Contitution to show up on CobbCat, which is the Cobb County Library System and has home access to ProQuest, but I need to figure this out since it is a very good resource.
I also found out a few days ago that the Atlanta History Center has a great website and research room. If you go to search the collection (under research) you will find their Terminus system as well as photo albums, the architecture database and the Franklin Garrett Necrology Genealogical Resource. Franklin Garrett’s Necrology is a genealogical resource for white men from the metropolitan Atlanta area, twenty-one years of age or older, who died between 1857 and 1931. Women listed in the necrology are mentioned in reference to their male counterparts. It's a great resource because it can give you an idea if the information was found in an obituary.
So today, I found the obituary of my wife's 3rd-great-grandfather, Pinkney Jackson Tuggle:
Death of Mr. P.J. Tuggle. - Mr. Pinkney J. Tuggle, a well known citizen of Atlanta, died night before last at ten o'clock, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Pierce Mims, 42 North Bell street. Mr. Tuggle was seventy years of age, having been born in Greene county in 1815. He was married to Miss Sarah W. D. Carter, daughter of Christopher Carter, of Newton county, and twelve children were born unto them, ten of whom are living. After the war Mr. Tuggle moved to Cherokee county, and later moved to Atlanta. During the last summer he was stricken with paralysis of the throat, and suffered much from that cause, but his death was the result of pneumonia. He will be buried at Oakland cemetery at ten o'clock today. Mr. Tuggle was a kind-hearted man and an affectionate husband and father, and had not an enemy in the world.
The Atlanta Constitution (1881-2001); Nov 8, 1885; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945) pg. 11
Most of the information in this obituary was already known to me, but there were a few things that were new:
1. I didn't know that Pinkney was a citizen of Atlanta. Everywhere I have found him his death place was Greene County. I even read in one place that he was buried at Oakland Cemetery because he refused to be buried at the William Tuggle plantation in Greene County. So I wonder why none of the researchers before me figure out that he died in Atlanta. I guess it's just the copy/paste nature of today's genealogy? Strange.
2. Up until now I hadn't researched all of Pinkney's children. I did a couple of quick searches for Pierce Mims and found out he was married to Lily Cola Tuggle and his full name was actually Franklin Pierce Mims. There are many trees for that family that I can now connect to. And I also found grave photos from Oakland Cemetery and actual family photos of Pierce and Lily. I also found their death certificates. Lots of great info to follow up on.
3. I only know of 10 children for Pinkney and Sarah, not 12. Two may have died in infancy but in any case, I wonder who they were and why I have not seen them before. Add to my ever-expanding to-do list.
4. I have only looked at Atlanta City Directories from 1887 onwards so I wonder what information I might find in 1885 if there is even a city directory for that time.
5. This last point reminded me to look at the census information I have for this family. I was shocked to see that I only had 1850 and 1860 information, when they lived in Greene County. I quickly pulled up 1870 (Canton, Cherokee County) and 1880 (Atlanta, Fulton County).
6. In 1880, Pinkney and Sarah lived with their daughter Mary J. (Martha Jenny) Vining and her husband David M. Vining at 225 Decatur Street. There are a total of 16 people living in this house including Paul Tuggle who was Pinkney's son and is buried next to his parents at Oakland.
7. Sarah's middle initials are wrong in the obituary. Her full name was Sarah Whitehead Battle (Tuggle) Carter. I wrote about her and her maternal line here.
Last year, I found Pinkney and Sarah's graves at Oakland Cemetery a while back and added pictures. I just looked at the photos again and noticed the Masonic symbol on the tombstone. Milton B. Tuggle, their son was also a mason. That's something else I need to check up on.
While searching for Pinkney Tuggle I came across an article in the Atlanta Constitution from 1895 about a scandalous legal custody battle over the 9 year-old grandson of P.J. Tuggle (who was named after him). There is a lot of drama in that story, including two parents who keep abducting the child from each other, private detectives, a chastity discussion by the Judge Westmoreland and much more. But that's a story for another post.
When my parents arrived for a visit a couple of weeks ago, my mother told me an amazing story about a good friend of hers that was reported in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot (latest news). I asked for permission to tell the story, because I think it is truly fascinating and wanted to share it with as many people as possible.
The article was printed on July 8th, 2009 in the "24 Hours" section of the paper. The cover of the section has a big family picture with the title of this post as the headline. It then says "One day, at the age of 83, Meir Bachar found out that he has seven brothers and sisters of which he had never heard about before, and they knew nothing about him. How did it happen? His father, Ben-Zion, had a relationship during his marriage with his wife's sister. The result? An impossible reunion."
How about that for an intriguing headline? I won't translate the whole article or go through all the details, but here's the main story.
Meir "Maxi" Bachar witnesses Kristallnacht in Vienna on November 9th, 1938. His fair hair and blue eyes helped him blend in with the angry mob who rampaged through the Jewish quarters, looting, burning and destroying 95 synagogues in the Austrian capital. Maxi left for Israel shortly after at the age of 14 and a half and 71 years later he was on his way back to meet a family he never knew.
It all started with an email that his daughter got one day from her cousin in London, England, telling her about a letter they got from Vienna claiming that Maxi has a brother in Amsterdam and two sister in Vienna - all children of Ben-Zion Bachar and his aunt Malka "Miriam" Lindenaur, the sister of his mother Frida. All this was very confusing because the family had only known of one sister, Suzy Morris, that had lived and then passed away in London. Nobody had heard about other family members before.
Turns out that another cousin found amongst her late father's possessions a folder that had a note with Malka Lindenaur's name on it along with her seven children. One of those names was her 82 year old mother's. And she also recognized another name of a woman who was supposedly a distant friend of her mother's. This cousin dug deep into the Vienna archives and realized that her mother was adopted along with her six siblings and they were all the children of Ben-Zion Bachar and Malka. Only three of the seven were still alive.
Almost a year later Maxi flew to Amsterdam to meet his brother Herman Kolomoyer. Their birth certificates show that they were born in the same house to two sisters who were involved with the same man. The father's identity was purposefully omitted from Herman's birth certificate as well as the other 6 illegitimate children. Even though he fathered 7 children with Malka, he refused to have any relationship with them and sent them one by one to orphanages for adoption. From his legal wife he only had two children, Maxi and Suzy.
Like the rest of the children, Herman was sent to an orphanage at the age of 2 and was supposed to be sent to a family in South Africa, but the war broke out and he was placed with a Christian Dutch family instead. Even though his birth certificate noted that his mother was Jewish and Herman found out about it at a young age, he hid this detail from the rest of his family and later on from his daughters as well. The two sisters in Vienna also had no idea that they came from a Jewish family and had lived their entire lives as Christians.
It turns out that growing up in Vienna, the family was poor and lived in a two room apartment. In one were Ben-Zion and his wife Frida, in the other was Frida's sister Malka and the children slept in the kitchen. The father was a gambler and a drunk who abused his children and did not provide for them. Maxi remembers looking for his father in card clubs and bars in order to get some money for food. He does not have fond memories of his father at all.
In 1938 his father was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp and Maxi was spared because of his mother's pleading. His sister was later sent to London and in 1940 he left for Israel with other Jewish children on a long trip through Yugoslavia, Saloniki, Turkey, Beirut and Damascus. At the age of 17 he joined the British Army. According to some testimony, his mother, Frida, and her sister, Malka, both perished in the Holocaust, but in 1945 while serving in Italy he found out that his father had survived and remarried. So he went to see him in Vienna.
In 1959 his father's new wife called to let him know that he was very sick. Overcoming his tough childhood memories and dislike of his father, Maxi stayed by hi bedside for three months. During all this time, Ben-Zion never said a word about all the orphaned siblings that were given up for adoption. Surprisingly he has no recollection of any of the children his aunt had with his father, even though most of them were born after him. Maxi has no way to explain why his mother stayed with his father or why her sister kept living with them all those years.
I think this is a fascinating story. Since the mothers of all these children were sisters, this keeps the gene pool intact. Would a DNA test be able to prove that there were different mothers or would they look like real siblings? My own great-grandfather, Avraham Smorgonski, married two sisters, Ester and Henia Segalchik. But that was only after Ester passed away and not behind her back.
I have been trying to write more, but it seems time is the most scarce and valuable commodity right now. So here are a few short notes (that hopefully I will turn into full posts in the near future):
1) Fulton County Court Records: My first trip in search of some real records was extremely fruitful. I found wills of my wife's grandfather, Lawrence William Brannon, and grand-aunt, Leila Elizabeth Brannon Pendergrass, as well as lots of supporting documents including a copy of a death certificate and names of several descendants. And this is just from looking into two estate records. There were several others that have been archived that I would need to order. And I haven't even touched the marriage records yet.
2) Fundraiser: My daughter's school held it's annual fundraiser, with my wife being one of the co-chairs for the second year in a row. It was a huge success and a lot of fun. Since the theme was the 'Tree of Life' I was able to get some very generous donations from a couple of 'Family Tree' companies. I will definitely write more about this.
3) Cousins, cousins, everywhere: People are popping up everywhere and joining our huge Geni tree. Distant Auth and Brannon family members have made contact and started updating their side of the family. One Brannon that went to school with Cynthia turned out to be a 5th cousin. While at school they were sure they were not related but I was quickly able to prove otherwise.
4) Newspaper clippings: I was able to find an obituary for my wife's grandmother, Emily Anne Brannon, from 2002 as well as an article detailing her wedding in 1931 to Lawrence J. Brannon. The wedding has a lot of details about guests and is full of useful information.
5) The Battle Book: While looking through HeritageQuest Online through my Cobb County Library subscription I ran across a 780-page book detailing the Battle family history. It was printed in 1930 and has hundreds of pages of information about the family. Here's a quick nugget:
It reads:
6. Jesse Battle — b. Hertford Co., N. C., July 8, 1738; d. Hancock Co., Ga., Aug. 25, 1805 (See will, Chap. V); reared by grandfather, William Battle, in Nansemond Co., Va.; Revolutionary soldier (See Chap. XII); removed 1777 to Swift Creek, Edgecombe Co., N. C., and thence, Feb. 20, 1787, to Greene (now Hancock) Co., Ga.; Baptist; m. Nansemond Co., Va., 1756, Susanna Faucette (b. France, Oct. 7, 17381; d. Hancock C0., Ga., May 8, 1819, a French Huguenot who escaped from France hidden in bales of silk). Children:
Jesse Battle and Susanna Faucette were my wife's 6th-great-grandparents. I love the part about the escape "from France hidden in bales of silk." With this book I have now been able to trace one of my daughter's lines back 13 generations, to her 10th-great-grandparents. Pretty incredible.
I really hope to post about all these topics in more detail. This is truly fascinating stuff!
This is my submission to the 57th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.
One of my best resources in my search so far have been newspapers. I've written previously about obituaries and how much information they provide as well as the social pages that give a lot of color to the characters of our ancestors. I recently came across a couple of interesting newspaper clips. The first one is about my wife's grandfather, Lawrence Brannon:
Boy Shot (rest missing)
Two Youngsters Were Playing "Indian Camp"
Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) 20-8-1919
Obviously this was a serious matter, but seems like everything turned out all right. Maybe I will do some more research to see whatever happened to the other boy. I guess gun control in 1919 was a bit of an issue. At least I got another verification of his address. From the 1920 US Census I thought it was 256 East Fair Street. Hmmmm....
The second article is the announcement of a wedding performed by my wife's great-grandfather, Rev. Milton B. Tuggle:
This clip confirmed to me that he indeed lived in Inman Park. It also confirmed he was clergy, which does not appear in any of the census info or city directories. But what I really love about this piece is the description of the bride and groom:
"The bride is an unusually pretty young woman and from one of Georgia's oldest and best families."
Too bad there's no picture attached.
I really love these old newspapers. I wish I had access to more of them.
