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!
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?
While rummaging through the box of photos and documents I got from my brother-in-law at the end of our first family-history road-trip, I came across a stack of yellow pages with poems on them. I sorted them out and saw that they were dedicated to my wife's grandmother, Emily Anne Wiley, from her second husband, Wallace Brannon. These are beautiful poems and he signed them all as "---El Don Juan." I believe they are all original because I have not been able to find them anywhere else.
Some of them look like they were probably a draft version and several where actually mailed and received (there are some duplicates). You can see the way they were folded as the creases are still visible. The ones that were folded appear to be on a different kind of paper. This paper has a watermark that looks like the official seal of the United States. One of them has Emily Anne's handwritten date on the bottom, stating it was "Rec'd June 29th 1936 E.A.B." That would probably suggest that Wallace was courting her or in their first years of marriage. I don't have a lot of information on Emily Anne's second marriage yet, but Wallace was a career Air Force Officer and I believe E.A.B. stands for Edwards Air Base. I need to research this some more.
So after this long intro let me get to the point. I am going to publish these poems here from time to time (when I have time that is). I will add a new category called Poems so that you can easily find them if you want to read them all.
Here's the first one titled "Ode to Emily Anne":
When shades of night are falling;
When the peace of twilight descends,
My heart cries aloud for you, dearest,
And here is the message it sends:
"I love you, my little dear,
You bring joy to my heart;
There must be no substitute
When we are forced apart."
I want to be always near you,
Have you for my very own,
And I hope you will someday
Know what love I have known.
It's hard to say with words
The things you feel so acutely,
And it's hard to define the love
That descends upon you so mutely.
If we must try to be serious,
And see with the eyes of truth,
Then let's accept this sweet love
And let our hearts be soothed.
I want to steal away your heart,
And leave mine in return.
I wish you to know of the love
That in my heart does burn.
---El Don Juan
If anyone has knowledge of these poems' origins, I would really appreciate you letting me know the correct source. But for now I will assume they are the original works of Wallace H. Brannon.
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 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.
I am going to recap what I have done so far in the past few weeks since I have embarked on this journey.
First, I read through my sister's roots project and got all fired up. Some of the pages in the project were printouts from Beit Hatfutzot, which is also known as the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. They had basic information about my paternal grandparents' villages in Poland. The two villages are Radzilow and Dolhinov (wow, I just found this site when doing a Google search. There is so much information I have to go through and I have already seen several familiar names!).
From there I jumped over to the Yad Vashem site which is The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. It is the largest and most impressive holocaust museum in the world and is located in Jerusalem. I remember going there when I was younger to do a research project about the Treblinka Concentration Camp. It was a project I did for school and the reason I chose that specific camp was the fact that it only had one purpose - kill as many people as fast as possible. We'll get back to this in a minute..jpg)
I sat at the computer with my mom and we started searching through The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names and all of a sudden we both started getting chills. There, in front of our very eyes, were hand written documents (called pages of testimony) filled out by my grandfather's first cousin, Rivka Geiger. To the right you can see the page she filled out about my great-grandfather, Hanoch Meir (Heynoch) Dombek. Rivka and her sister Tamara (Tema) Fruchter were the only close family survivors that my grandfather was able to find in Israel after the war. That's a story I will have to tell in full in a later post.
Anyway, by using the easy functionality of the site I was able to find 58 pages that were filled by Rivka. We were just skimming through them, trying to figure out the names and dates. Most of the testimony is in Yiddish and hard to read, but we slowly figured out who was who. Last night I finally sat down and went through them all and I now have a chart of three generations of the Dombek family that perished in the Shoah (holocaust). I will have a full post about that soon as well. I promise.
I started a quick family tree with some free online software through a link I found on the Beit Hatfutzot site. I won't actually link it here because it has all the details of living relatives. If you want to see it please let me know. I will also figure out a way to post this tree somewhere else.
I spent a few hours with my parents, trying to map out as many relatives as we could think of. The next day my mother and I went to visit my grandmother and I grilled her for over two hours, trying to get as many details as I could.
On my return to the US, I told my wife about my new hobby and asked to see what her mother had put together a few years ago. That pretty much got me started with a big chunk of information on her side. I also found a few people through JewishGen's Family Finder (JGFF) and the Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) who were nice enough to share some of their research and give me some tips moving forward. I joined Ancestry.com and found a distant relative of my wife's who has over 23K people in his tree. With his help and direction I decided to purchase the RootsMagic Genealogy Software tool. Through Ancestry.com I was able to piece together a lot of information from US Census data from 1840-1930 about the Auth, Wiley and Hytowitz families.
Well, this is becoming quite a long recap of the first few weeks and I already have several posts I promised to write. One of the things I will try to list at the bottom of each post is how many people I currently have in my family project.
7/29/08 - Current family members: 825 in 259 families.
