Talking Tooooooo Much

You can probably tell that I enjoy talking... and talking..... about my favorite subject - genealogy. I presented a workshop last night on "Getting Started in Genealogy". It was held at the Germantown Regional History and Genealogy Center (GRHGC) [in Germantown Tennessee]. It's a small library, but we had an overflowing crowd in attendance. The attendees had LOTS of questions and showed lots of interest. I knew I'd put a LOT of information into my presentation, and I knew I might glaze a few eyes toward the last 1/3 of the presentation, but I thought I'd stayed within my time frame of two hours. WRONG. I had to quickly click and click and click through the last 1/3 of the slides AFTER the 2 hours was up. Sigh. Guess I'll go in and cut out quite a bit or make it into more than one presentation. There's just so much I want beginning genealogists to know. I guess I'll have to give it in smaller doses. I asked for suggestions as to other workshops they'd like, and some of the suggestions were: 1) organizing all the information you collect, 2) using ancestry.com, 3) hands on internet searching, 4) site visits to local repositories/archives, 5) how to use the GRHGC. Some of those workshops are already planned, and the others are great ideas. What a great genealogical community.

Oath of Allegiance

Having southern roots, I knew that Confederate soldiers had to sign an Oath of Allegiance after the Civil War. What I hadn't realized was something I discovered yesterday.

I've been finding some remarkable documents on FOOTNOTE.COM all this week - from their collection of scanned documents from the National Archives. Last night I was going through the documents related to my husband's Revolutionary War ancestor, Zachariah Worley. I was reading through his pension application from September 1832. I was mesmerized reading his account of his march from Virginia to Pennsylvania to South Carolina to North Carolina and back to Virginia. I read of his capture and his release and then another enlistment of six weeks. After the death of Zachariah in 1837, pension request documents appear for his widow, Milley Dewitt Worley. THEN I found what I hadn't realized. She had been granted the pension, but the pension was taken away with the outbreak of the Civil War. She was living in Smith County Tennessee while receiving the pension, and therefore had to reapply in 1866 after the Civil War, and in order to, again, receive the pension she had to sign the above document, an Oath of Allegiance, to the United States and to the Union. I guess I should have realized that this would have been the case, but it just hadn't occurred to me. One other interesting thing about the above document (that's page 2), is that on page 1, she's shown to be 100 years old. I think some of the math may be off on that, as she's shown as 74 in the 1850 census, 90 in the 1860 census and now 100 in 1866.

Some of the other interesting reading in the documents was the statement of a Mr Shepperd that he had attended her wedding in Virginia - that he'd been working in the tobacco fields and had walked out of the fields to attend the wedding. This Mr Shepperd later married Milley's sister, according to the document. Mr Shepperd's family had also moved from Virginia to Smith County Tennessee.

The pension documents gave dates for Zachariah's birth, marriage and death and a death date for Milley. It mentioned children, but didn't name them. It mentioned that Milley was living with Benjamin Davis, in Smith County Tennessee, when she applied for her pension. He turned out to be her son-in-law, and knowing his name was the key to finding her in the Smith County census records, because in the 1850 census, Milley was listed in his household as Milley, but NOT as Milley Worley. She was just listed as a member of the Davis family, so she had been indexed as a Davis. In the 1860 census I found Milley in the Benjamin Davis household, but she had been indexed as Mila Warley (Okay. I might have found that one on my own).

What fun!

Learn Something New Every Day

I actually DO try to learn something new every day. Yesterday I was at the Tennessee Genealogical Library where I will be giving a presentation tomorrow (Thursday) evening on "Getting Started in Genealogy". I was at the library to make sure I knew how to connect their projector to my laptop. It seemed to work fine, but I was trying to adjust a few things, so eventually it didn't work at all. After an hour or so, I grabbed the library computer guy and he showed me that within PowerPoint, under SLIDE SHOW/SET UP SHOW, if you have the projector connected to the second monitor output on your laptop, you can choose DISPLAY SLIDE SHOW ON.... and it will give you a list, which includes MONITOR 2. A simple checkmark in that box and my presentation appeared just fine. If your projector is not connected you won't get those choices. Now I hope it works as well tomorrow night!! I guess I have more to learn about PowerPoint.

Today I was talking with some cousins in Kentucky and discussing a DNA study we have recently joined. I was able to share with them quite a bit of information on their ancestry, and it's always such a joy to hear the interested questions they ask and the wonder in their voices when some piece of information about an ancestor is heard for the first time. The thing I learned from the conversation was that one of the people I was speaking with (a wife of a cousin) was the sister of my mother's best friend. I had either forgotten that or had not known it. I was excited. I have quite a few pictures of her sister that I'll pull out and send to her.

Yesterday I received calls from a couple of folks who had wanted to attend my presentation tomorrow night, but had other obligations (I didn't ask, but it IS Valentines Day!!), and were wondering if we'd be presenting it again soon. Neither person had a computer, but one of them had started their genealogical research a few months ago and had access to computers at their local library. The other person was a total newbie to genealogy AND computers. Those are the enthusiastic people, who love to learn, that I love to speak with.

More Tennessee TV - Southern Routes

I discovered the Memphis version of the Tennessee Crossroads TV show. Tennessee Crossroads covers mainly the Nashville area, although it will cover some Eastern and some Western Tennessee (and sometimes southern Kentucky) places. WKNO (the Memphis PBS station) has a show that I discovered tonight called Southern Routes. It covers Memphis, western Tennessee and the show tonight had a segment on New Madrid Missouri. I love these kinds of shows - it's our heritage.

Website for the show: http://www.wkno.org/routes1a.html

Property Records Made the Connection

I was able to tell that the Garrett Gray who was in Virginia was the SAME Garrett Gray who had been in Fauquier County Virginia. I was able to tell that the Willard C Town who bought land in Caldwell County Kentucky was the SAME Willard C Town who had lived in Coshocton County Ohio. I didn't have census records to correlate ages, spouses or children because the Garrett Gray document I used was from 1798. Willard C Town appeared in Kentucky in 1840. Both of these events were before the 1850 census that is always so much help to us. I didn't have marriage records or wills, so what did I have that proved to me that these were the same people? I had property deeds. Study your property deeds. Here's what I found.

Garrett Gray: 22 Jan 1798 District of Ninety Six. John Cannon and Elinor, his wife to Garret Gray, late of the County of Fauquier, VA 100 L sterling.........

Willard C Town: After his father "went west" and never reappeared in Ohio, Willard sold his part of his father's land to Cephas Parker, who then sold it to another member of Willard's family. When Willard C Town then purchased land in Caldwell County Kentucky, guess who witnessed this purchase - Cephas Parker. He and his family had moved with Willard C Town to Caldwell County Kentucky.

Deeds are wonderful things!!