I had to head out to a conference in New York and decided to extend our family tradition of driving there and back. We've done it twice before when my oldest daughter was 6 months old and 1.5 years old. This time around we had both girls with us and we had a blast.
While I didn't have any plans to stop along the way and conduct any research, we did find out some interesting family facts. On the way north we drove through Spartanburg, SC where the Bishops and Brannons are from. It's good to know the drive up there is not that long and when I get my act together I will get out there again to try to figure out what happened to Calvin Rufus Bishop, who he married and what her maiden name was (my guess is Margaret Timmons). Then maybe I can figure out who her parents were and open up that branch in the tree.
We drove through Virginia from west to east on our way to DC and stopped at Luray Caverns. If you have never been, I highly recommend it. The line was not too long to get in and once inside, the caverns are just fantastic. But there was nothing of genealogical significance there so let's move on.
We didn't get a chance to see any of DC on the way up because we were already running late and just drove around in the rain. We decided to stop on the way back and visit the White House (which to my surprise is open to visitors only by appointment which can be made through your congressman up to 6 months in advance), the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and maybe one of the museums at the mall. It was a blazing hot day on the way back and we barely walked around the White House and made our way to the Natural History Museum. We then high-tailed it out of DC right smack into afternoon traffic. Lucky for us we were able to hit the HOV lane and zoom right out of the city.
We stopped to visit friends in Richmond and on our way out the following day we drove down Monument Avenue. When drove by the massive statue of General Lee, I commented to my wife and daughters that he was their cousin and then made a mental note to find the exact connection. I knew that one of my wife's great-grandmothers was Dorothy Lee who was married to Lodowick Tuggle but I wasn't sure how they were linked to the famous general. My father-in-law had scribbled something on an old family tree about being related to him but I have never made the connection.
We then stopped at Berkeley Plantation on the banks of the James River. Originally settled in 1619, where the first official Thanksgiving was celebrated, it is rich with American history. Benjamin Harrison who signed the declaration of independence lived there and his son William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the USA was born there. Berkeley is one of several famous plantations in the area.
We then made our way along the east coast back to Atlanta. We drove through Greene County where Lodowick and Dorothy settled after moving south from Virginia. Lodowick sold his Middlesex County, VA plantation in 1769, where his family had lived for 100 years. There are a couple of Tuggle cemeteries in Greene County today that I need to visit at some point in the future.
So last night I did a little bit of research and found that Dorothy Lee, my wife's fifth great-grandmother, was the third cousin of Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III, who was Robert E. Lee's father. So that makes General Lee my wife's fourth cousin, 6 times removed.
But there is another family connection there that I need to investigate further. Robert's mother was Anne Hill Carter Lee and was part of the Carter family of Virginia. Her father actually owned Shirley Plantation which is located right next to Berkeley Plantation. I've known that my wife's Carter branch is pretty big and in fact her 3rd great-grandmother was Sarah Whitehead Battle Carter Tuggle. She descends from more Virginia Carters.
So that's it for our trip report. I'll try to add some photos in a later post.
I wanted to post this to give some folks an idea of the frustration you can expect when dealing with some free OCR tools. I try to use OCR (optical character recognition) to transcribe information from images I find mostly in online resources but sometimes also ones I scan or photograph. There are some extremely 'clean' resources out there that have been scanned in high-res and will look great in any OCR tool. But there are some awful scans out there as well. Let's run through an example.
In my last post I wrote about the obituary of Sarah Tuggle. I found the scan of the obit from 1883 on Ancestry.com and knew right away that this will not be an easy one to convert to text:.jpg)
First of all, for some reason, Ancestry.com has recently started downloading images in PNG format. While this is a great format and is a close second to TIF, not many OCR applications can read it, so you have to convert it with some other tool. Luckily the basic Microsoft Office Picture Manager will do that in no time. But as you can see, the image is in extremely bad shape.
I tried first with PaperPort, which is a document organization tool that came with my DocuPen (an excellent handheld pen-sized scanner). PaperPort has a terrific OCR tool which works quickly and almost flawlessly when you deal with a good source image. But this is what I got with PaperPort:
sale.Close, right? That was the original PNG. Then I tried the converted JPG:
.1 -d— of na
o~ueru~~ e siw rr.'i~'~:~ ~r ove.n~w a..n ne.. .eror..o
of a.. riu~~n r~ui:.Not much better. I also have an OCR tool that came with my terrific HP OfficeJet Pro 8500. But I can never get it to work on images that were not scanned at a high DPI and it is clunky and not very user-friendly. I tried it anyway and just got frustrated some more.
aim . .~ me .~ aor nee
wu r~
~:~~ ° .«ac.o
Then I remembered that I had a great free OCR tool somewhere in the 70GB hard drive of my computer, but since I haven't used it in a while I couldn't remember what it was called and couldn't find it anywhere. So I went to look for some good OCR tool online. And there are a lot of those out there.
SimpleOCR looked promising but it couldn't convert the file at all. I tried another good image and it had a lot of errors anyway. The interesting feature was that it allowed you to chose from a drop-down list what word you want to use when it was not 100% sure what it scanned. Also, it has a 14-day trial for handwriting recognition but you have to teach the system how you write and go through a whole training exercise. That might come in handy some day.
Another free program that intrigued me was TopOCR. The interesting thing here is that it is intended for photo capture with cameras of at least 3 mega-pixel. I was sure it would be able to handle some bad scans but this is what I got:
A Adds Ads, Am, Carob Beef ~e, Bulb Or Err. PIU~DeJ TuggerIt basically found only one word right - Butler. So this was not going to work. It is a very quick tool though and let's you edit the outcome in a side-by-side view next to the original:
dled ~uddonl7 ye~lerd~^r at Me r~ld~ ace of h
46ugbler, Art. Plorco llf Inure, on Butler~l~eL 8,
nob * try dlnner *ad wry ~ppuenllr troll, 81 o^lr~n~d & IlUle ox ~^lll0~ d~, howe~ot, Al . dl^cd league -liar TV ~~ ~~
When I tried a good image I got pretty good results. But my problem is not with good images, it's the crappy ones I need help with.
So finally I found the program I had been using before. Obviously it's called FreeOCR. Doh! It also let's you view side-by-side with the original and open the recognized text in MS Word. I can't seem to get a screenshot of this application for some reason but here is what I got when I ran it:
A lnddan Death.The recognition wasn't great, but it was the closest I could get. And there was no difference between PNG and JPG either. When I ran better scans through FreeOCR it did great too. And it's free!
In. Earnh Tuggln, wits nt Hr. Plukncy Tuggle.
dlcd suddnnly yesterdny at the ruldcnce cl her
daughter, Mr:. Plame Mlm, nn llutlaralrael. Shu
aw s Imm dinner and wu nppu-entlr wall. Sha
rnmulnmnij A lime ou smlug clown, however, and
dlud \».|‘un; any cue could mach her. _
Do you have a favorite OCR program (free or not)? I'd love to hear from some of you in the comments.
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.
I just finished reading the latest Dan Brown novel "The Lost Symbol
What was interesting to me was that the whole plot takes place in a limited geographical location and over a very short time period. This is a testament to Brown's writing ability because the characters are very well developed and you still get sucked into the plot easily. I also had a feeling that he wrote the book almost like a screenplay, I guess that would make it easy to eventually make this into a movie at some point in the near future.
I love how you never know what's real and what's fiction in Brown's books. Although he mentions that all locations are real, you still have a strange feeling that some of it has to be fiction. Could these images and places actually exist and be out there in plain sight for all to see? I guess so.
This novel revolves around the Masonry and Freemasons. I've somehow always been aware of this fraternal group, but never gave them a lot of thought. Just a bunch of guys in aprons sitting around and talking about religion, right? Well, not according to this book or any of the numerous conspiracy theories out there. You can find a lot of information (and mis-information) out there these days. You just have to Google it.
While scanning some cemetery photos a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my wife's 2nd-great grandfather's headstone had a Masonic symbol on it:
Atlanta Constitution - 1/12/1910 - Rev. Milton B. Tuggle died at a private sanitarium yesterday afternoon. He lived at 17 Ashland Avenue. He is survived by his wife and five children, Mrs. Mary King, Mrs. Vining, Dave G. Vining, Mrs. Princey Mines and Paul L. Tuggle. The funeral will be at 2:30 pm from Barclay & Brandon's chapel, the Gate City lodge, No 2, Masons, being in charge. Interment will be in Oakland Cemetery.So I did a quick Google search for Gate City Lodge, No 2 and found out they actually have a website and a blog. You can navigate those pages and see who the current members are as well as the history of the lodge and more. Apparently they have been in the news lately for filing a civil suit against the Grand Lodge of Georgia:
The Grand Lodge of Georgia Free and Accepted Masons, a fraternal organization, is being sued by an Atlanta chapter and its senior officer who say the group’s state leaders are trying to disband the local affiliate because it accepted a black man as a member.You can read more about that here. Anyway, they withdrew their suit and all is well I guess.
I also found a contact email and sent them an email to see if they have any information about Milton Tuggle that they could share. I have never gone down this path before and not sure where it will lead just yet, but I hope I can get some more information this way.
Do you have any Masons in your tree? Any interesting stories or experiences? Let me know in the comments.
Once again a fun genea-challenge from Randy Seaver:
What is the most unique, strangest or funniest combination of given name and last name in your ancestry? Not in your database - in your ancestry.
Well, I don't have any unique ancestral names. My pedigree is full of Sarahs, Jacobs, Abrahams, Moshes and so on. You could say that my great-grandfather Ze'ev Arieh Kielczewski is an unusual name since in English it mean Wolf Lion Kielczewski (in Yiddish it is Wolf Leib).
So as usual I turn to my wife's side and since she has mostly Irish and English ancestry, nothing jumped at me right away. But there is one name that is unique in another way.
My wife's third great-grandmother was Sarah Whitehead Battle CARTER Tuggle (1820-1883). Her middle names are unique but that's only part of the story. She was the daughter of Sarah Whitehead BATTLE Carter who was the daughter of Sarah WHITEHEAD Battle. So that's three generations of women all named Sarah who kept their surnames as middle names.
Sarah Whitehead Battle Carter married Pinckney Jackson Tuggle and they lived (and died) in Greene County, Georgia. They are buried together in historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, and did not want to be buried in the Greene County family cemetery on William Tuggle plantation. I found their grave site and added them to find-a-grave:
Just to show you all how much more information there is about my wife side of the tree I went ahead and created the 5th generation RM4 ahnentafel for her ancestors:
16. Jesse Travis BRANNON: born 2 Feb 1837 in Georgia; married 20 Aug 1861 in Gwinnett County, Georgia. USA
17. Isabella Elizabeth ATKINSON: born Feb 1843 in Georgia; died in Georgia. USA
18. Calvin Rufus BISHOP: born 3 Jan 1852 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina; married; died 6 Jan 1880 in Beech Springs, Spartanburg County, South Carolina. USA
19. Margret TIMMONS: born bet 1852 and 1860 in South Carolina; died 14 Jan 1912 in Atlanta, Georgia. USA
20. Alexander McD. "Alex" WILEY: born abt 1844 in Pennsylvania; married.USA
21. Emily GREENAWALT: born Mar 1846 in Pennsylvania. USA
22. Rev. Milton B. TUGGLE: born 2 May 1845 in Oglethorpe County, Georgia; married 9 Jan 1894; died 12 Jan 1910 in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. USA
23. Anna Frances DEAN: born 17 Nov 1866 in Floyd County, Georgia; died 27 Jun 1947 in Dekalb County, Georgia. USA
24. Jacob HYTOWITZ: born 1864/5 in Russia; married abt 1882; died 9 Sep 1937 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. RUSSIA (probably Lithuania)
25. Rose "Rosa, Rosie" FRANK: born bet 1866 and 1868 in Poland; died 11 Feb 1941 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. POLAND
26. Thomas Ward RIGHTMIRE: born 11 Aug 1849 in Webster, Taylor County, West Virginia; married 22 Dec 1882; died 25 Oct 1922 in Parsons, Tucker County, West Virginia. USA
27. Edith Mae CONLEY: born 15 Nov 1858 in West Virginia; died 16 Mar 1917 in Tucker County, West Virginia. USA
28. Conrad J. AUTH: born Jul 1832 in Hesse-Cassel, Germany; married 1864; died 19 Jan 1911 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. GERMANY
29. Elizabeth BANNANTINE: born Feb 1839 in England; died 9 Oct 1933 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. ENGLAND
30. Thomas KEARNEY: born Apr 1840 in Ireland; married 1868. IRELAND
31. Maria : born Jan 1843 in Ireland. IRELAND
Yep, we have 10 born in the USA (4 GA, 2 SC, 2 PA, 2 WV), 1 RUSSIA, 1 POLAND, 1 GERMANY, 1 ENGLAND and 2 IRELAND. If I go further back and try to see where all these US folks are from, I have several generations until I find them mostly in IRELAND, ENGLAND and FRANCE. But most lines have been in the southern USA for a couple of centuries.
Looking at this list I see that I have a lot of work to do on my wife's side as well. I am missing death/burial dates/places and other important information.
Does anyone have any time to spare? Yeah, I didn't think so :-)
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!
Warning: This is a long post with lots of screenshots. Just thought you should know.
I was able to square away my account with MyHeritage and indeed, when you sign up for a Premium or PremiumPlus account you get access to the Premium features of the new FTB3. So let's go check them out together, shall we?
First off, the most important feature in my book, is SmartMatching. I will use Milton B. Tuggle, my wife's 2nd-Great-Grandfather for this example. When a SmartMatch is found for someone in your tree you will see a little green circle under their name. If you place your mouse over the green circle a little pop-up window will tell you how many matches were found. It says to double-click, but a single-click works too:
When you get the matches page you see your entry at the top and all matches below, sorted by order of quality of match (we'll get to that in a second). Hover over any detail on the screen and you will get a pop-up with more details:
You can also see whether or not you confirmed the match, the tree name and site owner where the match was found. When you hover over Quality you get a pop-up that shows details for the quality of the match, specifically names, dates, ancestors, siblings and descendants:
Not much is new so far, but when you go to the actual match you find the new 'Merge' button in the middle-left of the screen. But first you can see that there is a tree comparison between your tree on top and the other tree on the bottom. On the right hand side are the person's details and as you click through these partial trees (they only show three generations) the matching person in the other tree is automatically selected). So let's click on the 'Merge' button because this is where the fun begins:
So when you start merging you get a list of everyone related to the person in question and whether or not they have any new information to add. You can select to auto-merge the person, which means you don't have to do anything and the software will merge all information intelligently and automatically. Or you can go step-by-step which is what I recommend you do:
When you start the merging process you go one person at a time through the list and decide who you want to merge the information to or whether or not you want to skip that person altogether. You can also add new people, chose to do an auto-merge or just copy all the information. You get a summary of the details from both trees as well:
My biggest issue with this process is that you don't see whether or not this information is properly sourced and cited. But you will see later that any information you add from a SmartMatch merge is deemed secondary evidence in the citation confidence field.
So here's an example of merging options for Milton's father. As you can see the first name doesn't match because of a spelling discrepancy. I spell it Pinckney while the other site spells it Pinkney. I can chose to merge the names, which in this case would just keep my name but in other cases will actually add the other name as a middle name. I can keep my name or take the name from the other site:
The next fact is a little more interesting. I am unsure of the exact marriage date of Milton's parents, but since I have no idea what the source is for the date on the other site, I can add it to my data, but instead of replacing my data I can just choose to add it as a new marriage fact:
The next step is to confirm the match and add a citation for the new information. You can also reject the match or leave it as undetermined:
And finally, you get a summary of the planned merge. You can still cancel at this point if you like or go back and make changes:
So that was very straight forward and simple for anyone to follow. This is in line with FTB3 and MyHeritage's concept of easy-to-use tools.
I wanted to see what happened with that marriage fact that I added. So I went to Pinckney's family information page and checked the facts tab. You can see that there are two marriage facts - one is my original fact with a date range and the other is the alternate marriage fact I just added during the merge process:
You can also check out the details page for Pinckney and under citations you will find the source for this new information - Source, Page, Date as well as Confidence automatically entered as 'Secondary evidence' and a tect comment about this information 'Added by confirming a Smart Match'. All this was added without my intervention:
So to summarize this feature - I think it's great! I only wish there was some way to see the source details before merging new or potentially conflicting data. Hopefully this might be something that will be added in the future.
In future posts I will detail some of the other new features. Any requests?
This is my submission to the 9th edition of Smile for the Camera: Who are you? I really want to know!
Well this should be easy. I have boxes of photographs that I haven't even started scanning, where many of the subjects are complete unknowns. I have a hunch or two and some clues to get me started, but getting to the actual person is going to take a whole lot of digging. The hardest part about this challenge was trying to narrow down the photo selection. Let's get started shall we?
First up are two photos from a box I believe belonged to my wife's grandmother, Emily Anne. It's full of photographs of her and her family as well as many photos of and by her mother, Pattie Stone Tuggle who was a photographer herself (there are many photos stamped on the back with "Pattie T. Wiley"). These photos may be of Pattie's wedding and of her with two of her children:
The woman in both photos is obviously the same and since they were in the same photo binder I am going to conclude this as a fact. The binder also had the studio name (for the second photo): Leonard & Co. 57 1/2 Whitehall St. Atlanta, GA. I seem to remember that while going through the Atlanta City Directories I saw several entries for Whitehall St. so if I go through those again I may find out who this family is.
The next one is a complete unknown. It is also from Emily Anne's box and was in a glass frame, so it has some importance. It looks like a photo of a photo. I guess that by analyzing the pose and attire I can narrow down the range of years this was taken in, but I currently don't posses such knowledge. Handsome guy, whoever he is:
And here's the last one. This one is from my side of the family. It's one of the photos my mother brought with her on their most recent visit. According to my grandmother (who gave her the photo) this is possibly either one of her brothers or on of her uncles from Russia (location could be any one of several in East Europe). The large man in the center of the photo is the mystery. The way everyone is posed around him suggests he is the VIP in the photo. The woman on the bottom-right who is kneeling is holding his left hand tightly. And what's up with all those little flower bouquets on the floor? Is he wearing some sort of uniform? He's obviously not a golfer, but his facial tan line suggests he spends a lot of time outside and wears some sort of protective head gear. I would love to find out who this is:
Any ideas?
A couple of weeks ago I stepped out of my internet genealogy bubble and went to the library. I went to my local South Cobb Regional Library which is one of 17 libraries in Cobb County. And I got myself a brand new, shiny library card! Then I went over to the reference desk and asked where their genealogy section was and got a blank stare from the nice lady across the desk. Apparently they don't have a section like that, all they have is computer access. And at that location they didn't even have AncestryPlus. I did learn that I could access all the online resources from home, if I needed to, using my library number and a password.
I remembered that the Central Library has a big genealogy collection in the Georgia Room, so I headed that way. I walked right in, checked in with the front desk and got some instructions and a map. Yes, a map. The room is pretty big (12,000 books), so they give everyone a map to help them figure out where they want to go.
Since nobody was in the room I asked for some help anyway. I was led to the South Carolina section and shown the Spartanburg County books. I found a book entitled:
Spartanburg County Marriages, 1785-1911: Implied in Spartanburg County South Carolina Probate Records
By Barbara R. Langdon
Published by Langdon & Langdon Genealogical Research, 1992
ISBN 0938741071, 9780938741077
317 pages
I did not know this at the time, but South Carolina doesn't have marriage records prior to these dates and the way Langdon got this information is from going through loose probate records and trying to figure out who's who.
And there I found that Margaret Wolf married a Bishop man around 1870, which matched the information about my elusive Margaret. But this will have to wait for another post.
A couple of weeks later I went to the Georgia Room again, this time looking for actual Cobb County burial information since I found Margaret's obituary, but couldn't find what I wanted. So I headed over to the Fulton County Central Library and found Atlanta City Directories dating back to pre-1900. Of course, I forgot to bring my digital camera, which I took out of my bag to take Halloween pictures with, so I had to hand-write everything.
And there was a lot to write. I tracked Bishop's, Brannon's, McElrath's, Tuggle's and Wiley's through about two decades of life in Atlanta. But again, that's the topic for another post.
I have to say, the library is a terrific source of information. I just wish I knew a little more about how it's organized and how to find things faster. But I guess that's something you learn from experience.
And never leave home without your digital camera!
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.
This last Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in sunny Atlanta. We had to get out and do something so I came up with the brilliant idea of finding Cynthia's ancestors' homes in the city of Atlanta. I had found some of the addresses in the US Census images on Ancestry and remembered that most of them were easy to find. So with a 1/4 tank of gas we set off on our first genealogy road trip.
What struck us as very interesting is that these folks had moved from outside the city closer in over the years and eventually from the west side to the east of the city. Here's a map of our route that shows that west-to-east path:
I have a lot more investigating to do, as you will see, but here is the preliminary trip report:
A) 6 Edwin Place, Cook's District, Fulton County, Georgia. 1910 home of Emily Greenawalt, widow of Alexander McD. Wiley, parents of James Tecumseh Wiley Sr., husband of Pattie Stone Tuggle. Pattie, or as I found out this weekend was lovingly called 'Mama Pat', was my wife's great-grandmother. I need to do some digging to find out exactly what Cook's District was, but it was in Fulton County and is now part of the city of Atlanta. This house was on a beautiful wooded looped street that had a park inside the loop. Here's the picture:
B) 44 Neal Street, Cook's District, Fulton County, Georgia. 1900 home of Milton B. Tuggle, Anna Frances Dean and their daughter, Pattie Stone Tuggle ('Mama Pat'). Looking back on my notes, I have no idea how I came to the conclusion that this was the correct address. I have added this to my to do list. We couldn't find the actual house because the street numbers had changed. They are all triple digits now and that part of the city is not one where I wanted to get out and investigate. Does anyone know where I should look for house number changes? My guess would be somewhere in Fulton County. Right before we got there, we found an open gas station, but our luck ran out and the car in front of us was the last one to fill up.
C) 256 E. Fair Street, Atlanta, Georgia. 1920 home of William T. Brannon and Selena Bishop, parents of my wife's elusive grandfather, Lawrence Jefferson Brannon. This one was another no go. Fair Street is a fairly short street sliced in half by rail tracks with no crossing. The lower side had been torn down and some sort of warehouse has been built in it's place. That half of the street doesn't exist any more. The good news was that we found another open gas station and filled up!
D) 1186 Stewart Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1930 home of Selena Bishop and her son Lawrence Brannon. Both Google Maps and my GPS found this address even though the street is now called Metropolitan Parkway. I was telling this story to a father of one of my daughter's friends and he said they changed the name to try to revive that part of town. The house was boarded up and up for auction after being foreclosed. As we drove off my wife saw a sign that read: "Pittsburgh Community est. 1883 - "A Weed & Seed Community". I need to check that out as well. Here's the picture:
E) 17 E. Ashland Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1920 home of James T. Wiley, Pattie Stone Tuggle and their daughter Emily Anne Wiley (my wife's grandmother). Once again, we couldn't find the actual house because the numbers have been changed. It's a tiny street in the Inman Park / Little Five Points area. Pattie's parents, Milton and Anna lived in the house in 1910 and after Milton passed away in early 1910, Anna ran a boarding house at this location. By 1920 their daughter Pattie is living there with her family.
F) 215 Winter Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1930 home of James and Pattie. This house was in the family for several decades and was owned at a value of $6000 with a mortgage in 1930. I have found correspondence in the late 1950's for the same address. The house is on a beautiful and quiet side street in Decatur and both Cynthia and her older brother Frank remember it from their childhood. Here's the photo:
At the end of this trip down history lane we decided to go pay a visit to Cynthia's brother, Frank, and his family. We haven't seen them in a long time and wanted to see the renovations they have been doing to their house. We asked Kiki whether she wanted to go to Fernbank Museum or go visit her cousins and the decision was quickly made. And this is where the buried treasure part comes into play.
Frank had a box loaded with pictures, letters, love letters, memory books, and even old audio records (electronic transcriptions) that Emily Anne recorded especially for her husband who was a career military officer and stationed all over the world.
This is not a shoebox. This is a BIG moving box and it will take me a lot of time to go through it, scan, catalog and store everything. I will have a few posts detailing what I find, but for now I will leave you with a beautiful colored photo of Emily Anne and her second husband, Wallace H. Brannon. This was originally a black & white photo and on the back it lists all the colors that were used to paint it:
E. Hazel
H. Brown
Sweater Yellow
Dickie White
E. Blue
H. Brown
Bars Silver
Pre-Pearl Harbor
Good-Conduct
Leave last one uncolored
It also has the numbers 5-14 and 156787 on the back in pencil.
The photo is in a cardboard case and the only details is a small stamp at the bottom that reads: Dunbar, Charlotte, N.C.
I just ordered "Preserving Your Family Photographs: How to Organize, Present, and Restore Your Precious Family Images" and "Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photograph" both by Maureen A. Taylor. Maybe I can start using the correct terminology and figure out a little more about these amazing photos.
Well, that's it folks. Our first ever "Ancestor Field Trip" was a huge success and we look forward to many others. If you have any comments or ideas about how I should proceed with some of this new information, please let me know.
My wife's 2nd-great-grandfather, Milton B. Tuggle, volunteered to join Company C ("Dawson Grays") of the 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry regiment, Confederate States of America, Army of North Virginia, commanded by Capt. R. L. McWhorter, in 1861, when he was only 16 years old. It took them a year to figure out he was a minor before discharging him.
Two years later Milton re-enlisted to the same unit and served until Lee surrendered at Appomatox on the 9th of April, 1865. He stated in his application for a pension in 1900 that he was with his command when the war ended and had his gun too.
I found this information in the notes of one of the GEDCOM files I downloaded from One World Tree, so this could all be fiction. But if someone went to all the trouble of writing this elaborate note (and there is a lot more to it, including information about his employers, address in 1900, etc.) I would assume that a lot of it is true. I will obviously mark it as a 'questionable' source and try to dig deeper and uncover the actual facts. I was going to contact the GEDCOM file owner, but alas, he/she is listed as unknown, so that's a dead end for me.
I did start to look into who Capt. R. L. McWhorter was and came across this information:
Robert Ligon McWhorter was born June 19, 1819 in Bowling Green, Oglethorpe County, Georgia, the third son of Hugh McWhorter and Helena Ligon.
He attend Mercer University and was married to Nancy Winifred Janes, who was the daughter of Absolom Janes and Cordelia Callaway. Winifred lived only four years following their marriage and died, leaving one son, Robert Ligon McWhorter, Jr.
In 1849 Robert Ligon was married to Nancy Pope Thurmond. Their five children were: James Vason, John Alexander, Hamilton, Julia Pope, and Jessie Boyd McWhorter.
McWhorter enlisted in Company C ("Dawson Grays") of the 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry regiment as Captain on April 24, 1861. He was elected Major and Assistant Quartermaster of Wright's Brigade on April 28, 1862. He surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865.
Robert Ligon served in both houses of the State Legislature and as Speaker of the House during the Reconstruction period.
Contributed by Thomas Baumgartner (descendant of the McWhorters of Greene County, Georgia), "3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Veterans - Robert L. McWhorter", http://www.3gvi.org/ga3vetrmcwhorter.html, August 2008.
How can you pass up on these kinds of great stories?
How much faith can I put in One World Tree sources?
I ask this because tonight I found out that my wife's family tree dates all the way back to the BC-to-AD switch and beyond. I went back to the yellow legal pad her father scribbled some information on and found her great-grandmother was a Tuggle. When I started doing some research on that family I quickly found myself going down a long winding path back to London, then Denmark and eventually Ancient Troy and Jesus era Jerusalem. I found all kinds of "Princess of the Vandals" and Olaf "The Mighty" along the way as well.
The thing that initially struck me as odd was that the further I went, the more trees were linked to these names. At certain points I had over 300 trees linking to the same data. I understand that the further up the tree I go the more people are likely to converge and cite the same sources. But this is ridiculous.
How do you use this resource? Is it worthwhile? Should I flag it as 'questionable'?
