Stuff that makes genealogy fun!

Unfortunately this story is not from any of my known gene pool but I always leave hope for stuff like this to appear.  Ran into this article and was just splitting a gutt….now this little tidbit is just delightful, and if I had any Alexanders or Tompkins I’d be looking under any rock for kin!

Happy hunting, y’all;O)

3rd great Grandparents Gray

Although my heart wanted to get back to more regular posting, things just kept happening.  Still trying to get back our website domains and have an isp that works, but I’m giving up.  So, I thought about it and realized I needed some focus to my genealogy today.

My third great grandparents on both sides of my family are my stumbling blocks.  I’ve found that searching for a John Gray is pretty much as bad as looking for John Smith….sigh…and as one famous Gray researcher put it “Grays pretty much propogate like barnyard cats”.  Indeed.  To top it off I have no idea what the REAL name for his bride is.  In census work she is Devina, Lavina, Loubenia, get the idea?  And there was never a connection to her maiden surname.  According to the census materials again, John Gray was born in 1799 and his lovely bride about 1806.  The other important facts that I know are they were into farming, helped raise grandchildren, they lost two sons in the civil war and they were buried in Bold Springs Cemetery in Cairo, Georgia.  According to census evidence they both were also born in Georgia….where is speculative of course.  John died in 1881 and Devina in 1898 according to a gedcom, but I have no death certificates or evidence other than their burial information which was obtained the same way.  It appears they had 7 children, J Mench, William, Sarah, John, Martha, Amanda and Susan with the two eldest having been killed in separate battles of the civil war.  Of course that leaves the only brother to research being another John….swell…LOL!

Love to hear from collateral kin who may have evidence and/or family stories to corroborate or squash current info.

Tagged, who me?

Wowsers, I’ve been tagged!

Cathy from Genealogy – Digging up Dirt honored me with the “I Heart Your Blog” award. How special I feel now;O)  Just wished my internet service had allowed me to respond quicker.  Ah such is life in cyber-space though.

 

The rules associated with this particular tagging are that the tagged blogger

• can put the logo on his/her blog
• must link to the person who gave the award
• must nominate seven other blogs and link to them
• must leave a comment on each of the nominated blogs

So I suppose the start would be from my blogroll, but several have already received this, so I’ll try with some different ones – even a non-genealogy one;O)

• Jessica’s Genejournal
• Generoots
• GeneaBlogie
• Small-leaved Shamrock
• The Painted Generations
• Tracing the Tribe
• Technical Glitch – be right back;O)  Have to finish tagging them all, but internet is slowing down on me again…..ugh!

There are many others deserving but most have already gotten them.  Have fun cruising the sites;O)

Fun times

I’m being held hostage by my ISP/phone/cable company, so I am unable to keep this up until they start playing nice.  Mediacom has thus far avoided BBB, and weekly requests (since November) to fix the problems and now they are worse…no one can call in and internet is very intermittent.  The biggest pain is I’m paying for this….ay yi yi.  Anyway, didn’t want to give the impression that I’d vanished, I’ve actually got lots of stuff to share.  Hope to real soon.

Reminders

I have been scanning my father-in-laws photos so the entire family can share them.  I never really thought of it as possibly preserving memories, but this article by Eastman’s post today made me realize I may actually be doing the right thing, of course by accident, but hey!  Thankfully, Amy did that for my father’s stuff after he passed away, so guess I’ll have to continue with the other side after I finish that batch.  After thinking about it a bit further, figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to digitize all those birth certificates, etc., I’ve got hanging around.  Now if I could just find a definitive answer on how to file and retrieve them all….hmmmmm.

2nd cousin passes away.

Thomas Edward “Eddie” Belser passed away on the 3rd of August after a lengthy illness.  I’m really sad about it today.  I didn’t get to meet Eddie a couple years ago because I wasn’t able to get to the Gray reunion, and now I won’t ever get that chance….sigh.  Eddie is my second cousin and was 4 months younger than I am.  He is also a great-grandchild of Jim and Annie Gray of Pensacola, but his close relations are in Jacksonville.  I hope to be able to meet his closer kin someday soon….well, not in hurricane season though!

Computer in control

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the computer decided it needed to be reformatted, then again, and I’m just not getting done very quickly.  I should be up and finished with that stuff in a couple more days and hopefully back to updating the blog soon.

RootsMagic Blog

Yippee!  Finally a blogroll addition I can HIGHLY recommend.  I’ve been using this awesome software since the Family Origins days.  I never think twice about whether I want to upgrade it and it is the most economical and top-quality software I’ve found.  Prior to finding this through a local computer genealogy group, I’d spent well over $500 on all the others who promised me more…and never delivered.  Not only great software for keeping track of the kinfolk, but automatically creates a website version, oh yeah!  The mail list is super and kept on-topic, but I’m expecting the same greatness for the blog….way to go Bruce!  If you haven’t bought this software yet, head over to RootsMagic and take the trial.  You will thank me.  If you use it already, head over to the blog

Anniversary time!

82 years ago my grandparents married.  Now aren’t you glad?  LOL….their wedding info is here.  I knew I was old but wowsers this really smack my face right into it, ya know?  Their marriage resulted in two children, my father being one of them.  Hopefully in the near future some of their info and pix will get posted.  Been dealing with isp issues recently and so far they have edged forward.  So here’s to the grandparents’ day.  They were married 39 years when Marjorie passed away in 1965.  Warren died in 1976.

Civil War comes home

Wowsers, it really hit me as I was transcribing these records.  I thought it was bad knowing that Minch had died from battle, leaving a devastated widow and children.  Then when I got through John’s records and realized that John and Lovenia had at least two grown children perish…wow….I just can’t wrap my head around that.  Hopefully, by the retelling of the consequences, we may as people learn from the mistakes of the past….but sadly we just don’t teach history like we should.  Okay, before I go into a rant, I’m going to go play with my other class projects in Painter…hope you gain some info by visiting the Civil War page.