Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Memory Monday: Running Away
This was originally meant to be “My Earliest Memories,” but as it turns out, a lot of those memories involve Great Escapes.
My career as an escape artist must have started soon after I learned how to walk. I remember when we lived in our house in Cabazon, California (talk about desolate…) that I crawled out of my crib one day. I must have managed to do it without cracking my skull open. If my memory does not deceive me, the incentive was to get to my fluffy new robe, which was white and had a pocket into which I could slip the first present I ever remember getting – a box of eight Crayola crayons. New, pointy crayons with that new crayon smell.
Later, when we had moved to Lankershim Street in Highland for the first time, I must have hit that toddler age when I liked to do something naughty over and over again – and that was to escape out the front gate (no challenge; it was usually open) and start running off down the street. Of these attempts I do not actually have a direct memory, but I remember my mother and my Uncle Bill telling the story many times of how I would shoot out the front and then head out as fast as my legs would carry me until long-legged Uncle Bill would catch up to me in a few strides. He would then pick me up, with my short legs still pumping the air, and I would giggle insanely at how daring I had been and how useless his efforts at keeping me in the yard would be. I believe my older brother Don also indulged me in this game a few times.
The final escape effort I remember must have taken place when I was four or five, not too long before I started school. My mother had taken me with her when she went downtown to pay bills (does anyone else remember bills being taken care of this way, instead of through checks sent by mail?). We must have gone into the office to pay the utility bill and it must have been an awfully boring place. My scheme was to quietly duck out the door, look around, and then sneak back in. But I did something stupid. As I left, I did not look back to get a picture in my mind of what the door looked like. I don’t think I got very far before I realized that I hadn’t a clue how to get back to my mother. The next part is a bit fuzzy, but since I was terribly shy at that age, I must not have gone to ask an adult for help; rather, I suspect that the kind lady in the movie theater office must have noticed me looking frightened and lost. I do remember her picking me up and putting me on the counter and feeding me Jujubes. Things were looking up. Someone must have been sent to locate my mother, because she showed up shortly afterwards. That’s where the memory ends, because the memory of those delicious Jujubes have just erased everything else.
That was probably the last Great Escape. I gradually became aware that I did not have the greatest sense of direction, and this inhibited my adventurous spirit for a number of years. I was actually over thirty years old before I learned how to drive, so intimidated was I at the prospect of being able to find my way around. But shortly after learning how to drive (you can find the description at The Graveyard Rabbit of Northern Virginia – it happened in a graveyard!), I made a great discovery: maps are our friends. No, not TomTom, or Garmin, or any of those things. Maps.
So now my middle-aged mind wanders to … escapes. Not Great Escapes. Not total escapes from real life and real responsibilities. But little escapes. Escapes to small, unpretentious towns … towns I have never been to before … like the towns my ancestors lived in.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, for these escapes, I plan on having my husband accompany me. He has a great sense of direction. And he likes to run away, too.
My career as an escape artist must have started soon after I learned how to walk. I remember when we lived in our house in Cabazon, California (talk about desolate…) that I crawled out of my crib one day. I must have managed to do it without cracking my skull open. If my memory does not deceive me, the incentive was to get to my fluffy new robe, which was white and had a pocket into which I could slip the first present I ever remember getting – a box of eight Crayola crayons. New, pointy crayons with that new crayon smell.
Later, when we had moved to Lankershim Street in Highland for the first time, I must have hit that toddler age when I liked to do something naughty over and over again – and that was to escape out the front gate (no challenge; it was usually open) and start running off down the street. Of these attempts I do not actually have a direct memory, but I remember my mother and my Uncle Bill telling the story many times of how I would shoot out the front and then head out as fast as my legs would carry me until long-legged Uncle Bill would catch up to me in a few strides. He would then pick me up, with my short legs still pumping the air, and I would giggle insanely at how daring I had been and how useless his efforts at keeping me in the yard would be. I believe my older brother Don also indulged me in this game a few times.
The final escape effort I remember must have taken place when I was four or five, not too long before I started school. My mother had taken me with her when she went downtown to pay bills (does anyone else remember bills being taken care of this way, instead of through checks sent by mail?). We must have gone into the office to pay the utility bill and it must have been an awfully boring place. My scheme was to quietly duck out the door, look around, and then sneak back in. But I did something stupid. As I left, I did not look back to get a picture in my mind of what the door looked like. I don’t think I got very far before I realized that I hadn’t a clue how to get back to my mother. The next part is a bit fuzzy, but since I was terribly shy at that age, I must not have gone to ask an adult for help; rather, I suspect that the kind lady in the movie theater office must have noticed me looking frightened and lost. I do remember her picking me up and putting me on the counter and feeding me Jujubes. Things were looking up. Someone must have been sent to locate my mother, because she showed up shortly afterwards. That’s where the memory ends, because the memory of those delicious Jujubes have just erased everything else.
That was probably the last Great Escape. I gradually became aware that I did not have the greatest sense of direction, and this inhibited my adventurous spirit for a number of years. I was actually over thirty years old before I learned how to drive, so intimidated was I at the prospect of being able to find my way around. But shortly after learning how to drive (you can find the description at The Graveyard Rabbit of Northern Virginia – it happened in a graveyard!), I made a great discovery: maps are our friends. No, not TomTom, or Garmin, or any of those things. Maps.
So now my middle-aged mind wanders to … escapes. Not Great Escapes. Not total escapes from real life and real responsibilities. But little escapes. Escapes to small, unpretentious towns … towns I have never been to before … like the towns my ancestors lived in.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, for these escapes, I plan on having my husband accompany me. He has a great sense of direction. And he likes to run away, too.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Madness Monday: Emily Tarrant
Emily Tarrant was my great-great-grandmother. She was married to William Spencer Moore. This family was outlined in my latest Featured Family Friday.
Emily Tarrant was one of my earliest discoveries, and she was something like a “trading card” for me when I first started corresponding with other researchers in the fall of 2005. I don’t mean that I used her like a trading card, but she was a piece of the Moore family puzzle that I had to contribute at that time so that I didn’t totally feel like a beggar receiving alms when other researchers generously provide me with information on this family. I had found her name listed as the mother on the death certificate of my great-grandfather, Harlston Perrin Moore.
The problem is that since that time neither I nor anyone else has learned much about Emily Tarrant. We do not know her exact date of birth, her date of death (we believe it was between 1870 and 1880), or her parents’ names. I suppose you could say that some progress was made when I discovered that Spencer Moore’s family came from Greenville; since there was a large concentration of Tarrant families there, we are proceeding on the assumption that Emily came from one of those families. However, I have not seen any research that lists her as a daughter of any of those families. A third cousin has posted some inquiries in the relevant places, but so far no one has replied.
Most of the information that we have on Emily Tarrant Moore comes from four censuses. The 1840 census for W. S. Moore in Anderson County, South Carolina lists three females living with him, 2 of whom are between the ages of 20 and 30 and on between the ages of 10 and 15. Spencer’s sisters Elizabeth and Susannah, who are shown living with Spencer and Emily on the 1850 and 1860 censuses, would be right for the older females, but 10 to15 is too young for Emily. There could be several explanations for this. (1) There could be a mistake on the census. (2) Spencer and Emily’s oldest known child, Preston, was born in around 1843, so perhaps they were not yet married and the younger female is some other female relation. However, land records would indicate that Spencer moved to Anderson County from Greenville county in around 1836 and the most likely scenario would be that he and Emily were already married by that time (this is not a certainty, of course). (3) Perhaps only one of Spencer’s sisters was living with them, Emily was the second female between 20 and 30, and the younger female was some other family relation.
On the 1850 Emily’s age is given as 35. On the 1860 census her age is given as 31 (or perhaps 37; this census does not seem to give correct information for Emily or Spencer (37), who is double-counted over in Greenville next to his brother’s widow and has a more probable age of 46 shown for him there). Finally, on the 1870 census, her age is shown as 57.
Emily is mentioned in Spencer’s July 1865 will; Spencer died in 1871. My great-grandfather is shown as the owner of the family farm on an 1877 map of Anderson County and he moved to Texas in that year, so I believe that Emily probably died before this.
My approach to solving the mystery of Emily Tarrant will involve “sorting out” the Greenville Tarrants. I will also be working on “sorting out” the Greenville Moores, so this work will probably be done simultaneously.
Somewhat on the subject of Genealogy Prompt #17 (make a research task list), I have in mind the tasks involved in this research. However, these are not short-term tasks. Some involve ordering or finding materials and some will definitely require some on-site research in Greenville (something I am really looking forward to doing some day!). For both the Tarrants and the Moores I need to:
1. Record and correlate land transactions, noting and cross-indexing all the other names mentioned. Locate a very detailed map of Greenville County and plot the locations of the land on it.
2. Find and transcribe the wills for Greenville Tarrants and Moores as well as for families that appear to be closely associated with them. Continue to cross-index new names mentioned in these wills.
3. Continue my research for my “Descendants of Samuel Moore of Greenville, South Carolina” project, report on it in my blog, and post queries on the families involved in the various genealogy discussion boards. Post inquiries for the Tarrants.
4. Create as much of a Greenville Tarrant family tree as I can and identify “promising” families for Emily Tarrant.
I have already made a start on task #1 by purchasing a couple of Greenville land deed books and will be ordering some more. The Greenville Library has some online images of wills and land transaction indexes. Land records and wills have already provided some tantalizing clues and I will be pursuing these.
So why does Emily Tarrant drive me so crazy? I suppose it is because the answer to her mystery seems so close and yet so far away. I feel like one of those TV detectives who keeps looking at the available information but just cannot figure out how to put it together. And I am haunted by the thought that Emily may just be one of those women who leaves behind very few traces of her existence.
Emily Tarrant was one of my earliest discoveries, and she was something like a “trading card” for me when I first started corresponding with other researchers in the fall of 2005. I don’t mean that I used her like a trading card, but she was a piece of the Moore family puzzle that I had to contribute at that time so that I didn’t totally feel like a beggar receiving alms when other researchers generously provide me with information on this family. I had found her name listed as the mother on the death certificate of my great-grandfather, Harlston Perrin Moore.
The problem is that since that time neither I nor anyone else has learned much about Emily Tarrant. We do not know her exact date of birth, her date of death (we believe it was between 1870 and 1880), or her parents’ names. I suppose you could say that some progress was made when I discovered that Spencer Moore’s family came from Greenville; since there was a large concentration of Tarrant families there, we are proceeding on the assumption that Emily came from one of those families. However, I have not seen any research that lists her as a daughter of any of those families. A third cousin has posted some inquiries in the relevant places, but so far no one has replied.
Most of the information that we have on Emily Tarrant Moore comes from four censuses. The 1840 census for W. S. Moore in Anderson County, South Carolina lists three females living with him, 2 of whom are between the ages of 20 and 30 and on between the ages of 10 and 15. Spencer’s sisters Elizabeth and Susannah, who are shown living with Spencer and Emily on the 1850 and 1860 censuses, would be right for the older females, but 10 to15 is too young for Emily. There could be several explanations for this. (1) There could be a mistake on the census. (2) Spencer and Emily’s oldest known child, Preston, was born in around 1843, so perhaps they were not yet married and the younger female is some other female relation. However, land records would indicate that Spencer moved to Anderson County from Greenville county in around 1836 and the most likely scenario would be that he and Emily were already married by that time (this is not a certainty, of course). (3) Perhaps only one of Spencer’s sisters was living with them, Emily was the second female between 20 and 30, and the younger female was some other family relation.
On the 1850 Emily’s age is given as 35. On the 1860 census her age is given as 31 (or perhaps 37; this census does not seem to give correct information for Emily or Spencer (37), who is double-counted over in Greenville next to his brother’s widow and has a more probable age of 46 shown for him there). Finally, on the 1870 census, her age is shown as 57.
Emily is mentioned in Spencer’s July 1865 will; Spencer died in 1871. My great-grandfather is shown as the owner of the family farm on an 1877 map of Anderson County and he moved to Texas in that year, so I believe that Emily probably died before this.
My approach to solving the mystery of Emily Tarrant will involve “sorting out” the Greenville Tarrants. I will also be working on “sorting out” the Greenville Moores, so this work will probably be done simultaneously.
Somewhat on the subject of Genealogy Prompt #17 (make a research task list), I have in mind the tasks involved in this research. However, these are not short-term tasks. Some involve ordering or finding materials and some will definitely require some on-site research in Greenville (something I am really looking forward to doing some day!). For both the Tarrants and the Moores I need to:
1. Record and correlate land transactions, noting and cross-indexing all the other names mentioned. Locate a very detailed map of Greenville County and plot the locations of the land on it.
2. Find and transcribe the wills for Greenville Tarrants and Moores as well as for families that appear to be closely associated with them. Continue to cross-index new names mentioned in these wills.
3. Continue my research for my “Descendants of Samuel Moore of Greenville, South Carolina” project, report on it in my blog, and post queries on the families involved in the various genealogy discussion boards. Post inquiries for the Tarrants.
4. Create as much of a Greenville Tarrant family tree as I can and identify “promising” families for Emily Tarrant.
I have already made a start on task #1 by purchasing a couple of Greenville land deed books and will be ordering some more. The Greenville Library has some online images of wills and land transaction indexes. Land records and wills have already provided some tantalizing clues and I will be pursuing these.
So why does Emily Tarrant drive me so crazy? I suppose it is because the answer to her mystery seems so close and yet so far away. I feel like one of those TV detectives who keeps looking at the available information but just cannot figure out how to put it together. And I am haunted by the thought that Emily may just be one of those women who leaves behind very few traces of her existence.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Who Is Your Oldest Living Relative (Friday Fun from Wendy)
An idea from Wendy Littrell at All My Branches Genealogy
You know, I hadn’t actually ever stopped to consider this question before now. I know that only one of my parents' siblings is still alive (my father's youngest brother, my Uncle Bill, who is 74); however, it turns out that he is not my oldest living relative. (Of course, this doesn't count distant relatives, and I do have a 3rd cousin once removed that I correspond with who is in his late 80s.) My oldest relative is a cousin who is the daughter of my Dad’s and Uncle Bill’s oldest sister. I have never met this cousin.
I hope to devote several posts to Uncle Bill at some point, because he has lived quite a life and has provided me with a lot of information during our telephone calls. He was also very generous in sharing information with my younger daughter when she interviewed him for a school history project. He even remembers my great-grandmother Lizzie Brinlee and my Grandma Sallie Brinlee’s parents, William Henry “Jack” Norman and Sara Jane Sisson Norman. I remember Uncle Bill from the time I was very small, and he and my father apparently shared a lot of adventures in their youth. He traveled to many parts of the of the Pacific rim when he was in the Navy and saw a lot of the US Southwest when he was working in construction.
You know, I hadn’t actually ever stopped to consider this question before now. I know that only one of my parents' siblings is still alive (my father's youngest brother, my Uncle Bill, who is 74); however, it turns out that he is not my oldest living relative. (Of course, this doesn't count distant relatives, and I do have a 3rd cousin once removed that I correspond with who is in his late 80s.) My oldest relative is a cousin who is the daughter of my Dad’s and Uncle Bill’s oldest sister. I have never met this cousin.
I hope to devote several posts to Uncle Bill at some point, because he has lived quite a life and has provided me with a lot of information during our telephone calls. He was also very generous in sharing information with my younger daughter when she interviewed him for a school history project. He even remembers my great-grandmother Lizzie Brinlee and my Grandma Sallie Brinlee’s parents, William Henry “Jack” Norman and Sara Jane Sisson Norman. I remember Uncle Bill from the time I was very small, and he and my father apparently shared a lot of adventures in their youth. He traveled to many parts of the of the Pacific rim when he was in the Navy and saw a lot of the US Southwest when he was working in construction.
Featured Family Friday: William Spencer Moore and Emily Tarrant
These are my great-great grandparents and the next family in order as I go back through the Moores. In upcoming articles I will cover the families of each of the children except for Preston E. Moore, who apparently died in the Civil War; Spencer Moore’s will, dated 25 July 1865, lists Preston among those to share in his estate “should he be living.” I have information on Preston’s Civil War service, but that will be covered in an article at a later date.
William Spencer Moore
b. 1813, South Carolina
d. 31 Oct 1871, Anderson Co., South Carolina
& Emily Tarrant
b. 1813, South Carolina
d. bef 1880
|--Preston E. Moore
|----b. 1843, South Carolina
|----d. between 1863 and 1865
|--Harlston Perrin Moore
|----b. 4 Dec 1845, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 12 Dec 1921, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|---& Martha E. “Mattie” Lewis
|----b. 8 Nov 1848, Franklin Co., Georgia
|----d. 22 Sep 1930, Plano, Collin Co., Texas
|----m. 3 Dec 1865, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|--Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore*
|----b. 17 Feb 1848, South Carolina
|----d. 22 Dec 1923, Newberry Co., SC
|---& Nora Roberts
|----b. 1855
|----d. bef 1900
|--Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore*
|----b. 17 Feb 1848, South Carolina
|-----d. 22 Dec 1923, Newberry Co., SC
|---& Martha E. Black
|----b. 14 Aug 1838, South Carolina
|----d. 8 Nov 1927, South Carolina
|--William Brewster “Bruce” Moore
|----b. 9 May 1851, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 27 Jul 1924, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|---& Mary Elizora Elizabeth Shirley
|----b. 18 Feb 1849, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 31 Aug 1926, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----m. 1880
|--Anna Jerusha Moore
|----b. 12 Jan 1854, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 17 Sep 1889
|---& William Riley Cartee
|----b. 18 Sep 1850, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 28 Sep 1918, Anderson Co., South Carolina
William Spencer Moore was born around 1813 in Greenville County, South Carolina and first appears on the Anderson County census in 1840; land documents indicate that he may have moved there in 1836. Three females are shown living with him on the 1840 census; I believe these are his sisters and his wife Emily Tarrant Moore (also born around 1813).
Spencer and Emily Moore lived in the Hopewell area of Anderson County, just south of Twenty-Six Mile Creek. They were members of Big Creek Baptist Church, where Spencer was elected deacon in 1845 but turned the office down, and later of Williamston Baptist Church, which Spencer helped to organize, and finally of Hopewell Baptist Church. Spencer was a postmaster in Williamston in 1851, headed the list of signatories on the first petition to incorporate the Village of Williamston in 1850, and in the 1860s served as a County Registrar and was nominated for County Commissioner as detailed in the 27 May 1868 Anderson Intelligencer: "In nominating County Commissioners, we have selected disabled men, who deserve the support and confidence of their fellow citizens. Mr. Moore has been unfortunate in having both arms broken recently, but will be able to discharge the duties of his office, if elected. He is a farmer, and a Christian gentleman, loved and respected by his neighbors."
The November 1871 minutes for Hopewell Baptist Church indicate that Spencer Moore died on 31 October 1871. I have not been able to find Emily Moore on the 1880 census and believe that she had died by that time.
If you are reading this and believe that you are related to this family I would really like to hear from you (you can find my e-mail if you click on View my complete profile under the section at the left entitled “About Me”).
William Spencer Moore
b. 1813, South Carolina
d. 31 Oct 1871, Anderson Co., South Carolina
& Emily Tarrant
b. 1813, South Carolina
d. bef 1880
|--Preston E. Moore
|----b. 1843, South Carolina
|----d. between 1863 and 1865
|--Harlston Perrin Moore
|----b. 4 Dec 1845, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 12 Dec 1921, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|---& Martha E. “Mattie” Lewis
|----b. 8 Nov 1848, Franklin Co., Georgia
|----d. 22 Sep 1930, Plano, Collin Co., Texas
|----m. 3 Dec 1865, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|--Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore*
|----b. 17 Feb 1848, South Carolina
|----d. 22 Dec 1923, Newberry Co., SC
|---& Nora Roberts
|----b. 1855
|----d. bef 1900
|--Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore*
|----b. 17 Feb 1848, South Carolina
|-----d. 22 Dec 1923, Newberry Co., SC
|---& Martha E. Black
|----b. 14 Aug 1838, South Carolina
|----d. 8 Nov 1927, South Carolina
|--William Brewster “Bruce” Moore
|----b. 9 May 1851, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 27 Jul 1924, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|---& Mary Elizora Elizabeth Shirley
|----b. 18 Feb 1849, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 31 Aug 1926, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----m. 1880
|--Anna Jerusha Moore
|----b. 12 Jan 1854, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 17 Sep 1889
|---& William Riley Cartee
|----b. 18 Sep 1850, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|----d. 28 Sep 1918, Anderson Co., South Carolina
William Spencer Moore was born around 1813 in Greenville County, South Carolina and first appears on the Anderson County census in 1840; land documents indicate that he may have moved there in 1836. Three females are shown living with him on the 1840 census; I believe these are his sisters and his wife Emily Tarrant Moore (also born around 1813).
Spencer and Emily Moore lived in the Hopewell area of Anderson County, just south of Twenty-Six Mile Creek. They were members of Big Creek Baptist Church, where Spencer was elected deacon in 1845 but turned the office down, and later of Williamston Baptist Church, which Spencer helped to organize, and finally of Hopewell Baptist Church. Spencer was a postmaster in Williamston in 1851, headed the list of signatories on the first petition to incorporate the Village of Williamston in 1850, and in the 1860s served as a County Registrar and was nominated for County Commissioner as detailed in the 27 May 1868 Anderson Intelligencer: "In nominating County Commissioners, we have selected disabled men, who deserve the support and confidence of their fellow citizens. Mr. Moore has been unfortunate in having both arms broken recently, but will be able to discharge the duties of his office, if elected. He is a farmer, and a Christian gentleman, loved and respected by his neighbors."
The November 1871 minutes for Hopewell Baptist Church indicate that Spencer Moore died on 31 October 1871. I have not been able to find Emily Moore on the 1880 census and believe that she had died by that time.
If you are reading this and believe that you are related to this family I would really like to hear from you (you can find my e-mail if you click on View my complete profile under the section at the left entitled “About Me”).
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wordless Wednesday: Greenway Downs Park
Some pictures taken by the creek at our local park by my daughter when she came home from college for Easter.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Blogging Prompt 15: The Death Certificate with No Name
List some vital signs. Talk about specific birth, marriage and death certificates. Topics may include misspelled names, fudged dates, other anomalies that stand out in your records.
When I learned that the South Carolina Death Record Collection on Ancestry had added digital images, I knew I had to make systematic use of this resource for my Moore and Lewis lines. In connection with my “Descendants of Samuel Moore of Greenville” project, I decided to go through all the certificates for Moores in Greenville; the search page for this particular record set has a county menu option, so I could just plug in “Greenville” and “Moore” and work on the list of records that would generate.
On of the results simply had “Moore.” I did not know whether or not this would be one of “my” Moores, but to be thorough, I checked it. There was nothing at all written in the section for the name of the deceased. However, an observant indexer must have noticed that the last name of the father listed for the deceased was “Moore,” so that was how it was indexed. In fact, listed as the father of the deceased was B. M. Moore, aka Bud Mathis Moore, the brother of my great-great grandfather William Spencer Moore. I saw that the informant was J. M. Blakely – this would be James Moore Blakely, the son of Franklin Blakely and Bud M. Moore’s daughter Susan Amanda. And, looking at the other information provided on the deceased, I could see that the deceased had been Susan Moore Blakely. Ordinarily she would have been indexed under “Blakely,” but the indexer was correct in choosing the father’s name, since the relationship of the informant to the deceased is not indicated. I submitted a correction to Ancestry, and it now shows up in the search results.
Carefully going through long lists of search results can be tiring, but I’ve learned through many experiences like this that it is worthwhile.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Memory Monday: Miss Elgin
Miss Elgin, my teacher in the fourth grade, was the strict teacher at Warm Springs Elementary School. As in, the strict teacher. She was not harsh or unkind, just very demanding as far as discipline and good behavior were concerned and very intolerant of infractions of the rules. Being in her class was a bit like a mild form of boot camp at times, but her students seemed to feel that they were tough enough to take it; Miss Elgin’s expectations were very clear and all were expected to meet them.
Miss Elgin was thin, a little taller than average, and wore her dark gray hair very close-cropped. She dressed plainly and wore sensible shoes. During recess time we always knew where she was, because she wore a whistle on a chain around her neck and used it freely.
The two subjects we studied in fourth grade that I remember very clearly were California state history and long division. I remember studying about Fr. Junipero Serra and Gaspar de Portola and the establishment of the missions in California.
In our study of long division we probably benefited from the calm and focused atmosphere of Miss Elgin’s classroom. We were running just ahead of the New Math wave – that is, it would be another year or so before New Math was introduced.
Once, when Miss Elgin had a throat ailment and could not read aloud to us in the afternoons as she usually did (horrors!), she let me do it for a couple of weeks until her throat was better. It was then that I learned that reading aloud for a prolonged stretch without getting tired or losing your concentration was no small feat.
Another milestone I remember from the fourth grade – and, with the exception of a pair of very precocious girls, it seemed to hit all of us girls at the same time – was the realization that boys were not totally yucky, stupid, contemptible beings. This was first reflected in our mode of play at recess. Second grade and the first half of third grade for many of us girls had been dominated by “horsy” games (we pretended to be horses). Another popular pastime was playing “King of the Hill” on top of huge tires that had been installed as playground equipment. By fourth grade these gave way to cut-throat foursquare games and playing inside the tires. Well, not actually playing, but rather chatting and gossiping, two at a time, because two kids could fit inside a tire, one on each side. At first it was just girls, but then it became girls and boys. I had a friend who was a boy who would spend recesses with me talking inside the tire, but I didn’t think anything about it at first. Then on Valentine’s Day I received a “special” valentine from him. Oh. We both behaved awkwardly for a couple of days and then returned to our normal friendship.
The biggest event I remember from Miss Elgin’s class was the Big Class Spelling Challenge. It was not a spelling bee; instead, it was based on our weekly spelling tests. The object: the entire class had to make 100% on the spelling test. The prize: chocolate candy bars for everyone. We were psyched. Week after week, we came so close. We had a couple of classmates in particular who were struggling with schoolwork, but there were a number of weeks when one or both of them made 100% and someone else in the class fell short. It was nice because we were all rooting for one another. Finally the long-awaited Friday arrived: 100% on every test. We were on top of the world – we were the champs!
I wish I could say the story ended on this positive note. It did not. The next Monday, Miss Elgin brought in the chocolate bars and we lined up to claim them. When the last student had received his prize, Miss Elgin turned to us with a frown and an eyebrow raised in disapproval: “Not a single person said, ‘Thank you.’ I am so disappointed.” We hung our heads in shame and went from being all puffed up to deflated little balloons. Bad manners were a definite no-no in Miss Elgin’s class.
Miss Elgin was thin, a little taller than average, and wore her dark gray hair very close-cropped. She dressed plainly and wore sensible shoes. During recess time we always knew where she was, because she wore a whistle on a chain around her neck and used it freely.
The two subjects we studied in fourth grade that I remember very clearly were California state history and long division. I remember studying about Fr. Junipero Serra and Gaspar de Portola and the establishment of the missions in California.
In our study of long division we probably benefited from the calm and focused atmosphere of Miss Elgin’s classroom. We were running just ahead of the New Math wave – that is, it would be another year or so before New Math was introduced.
Once, when Miss Elgin had a throat ailment and could not read aloud to us in the afternoons as she usually did (horrors!), she let me do it for a couple of weeks until her throat was better. It was then that I learned that reading aloud for a prolonged stretch without getting tired or losing your concentration was no small feat.
Another milestone I remember from the fourth grade – and, with the exception of a pair of very precocious girls, it seemed to hit all of us girls at the same time – was the realization that boys were not totally yucky, stupid, contemptible beings. This was first reflected in our mode of play at recess. Second grade and the first half of third grade for many of us girls had been dominated by “horsy” games (we pretended to be horses). Another popular pastime was playing “King of the Hill” on top of huge tires that had been installed as playground equipment. By fourth grade these gave way to cut-throat foursquare games and playing inside the tires. Well, not actually playing, but rather chatting and gossiping, two at a time, because two kids could fit inside a tire, one on each side. At first it was just girls, but then it became girls and boys. I had a friend who was a boy who would spend recesses with me talking inside the tire, but I didn’t think anything about it at first. Then on Valentine’s Day I received a “special” valentine from him. Oh. We both behaved awkwardly for a couple of days and then returned to our normal friendship.
The biggest event I remember from Miss Elgin’s class was the Big Class Spelling Challenge. It was not a spelling bee; instead, it was based on our weekly spelling tests. The object: the entire class had to make 100% on the spelling test. The prize: chocolate candy bars for everyone. We were psyched. Week after week, we came so close. We had a couple of classmates in particular who were struggling with schoolwork, but there were a number of weeks when one or both of them made 100% and someone else in the class fell short. It was nice because we were all rooting for one another. Finally the long-awaited Friday arrived: 100% on every test. We were on top of the world – we were the champs!
I wish I could say the story ended on this positive note. It did not. The next Monday, Miss Elgin brought in the chocolate bars and we lined up to claim them. When the last student had received his prize, Miss Elgin turned to us with a frown and an eyebrow raised in disapproval: “Not a single person said, ‘Thank you.’ I am so disappointed.” We hung our heads in shame and went from being all puffed up to deflated little balloons. Bad manners were a definite no-no in Miss Elgin’s class.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Easter Traditions in the Eastern Churches: The Easter Basket
The general logic behind the selection of foods that go into the Easter basket among Eastern Christians (Orthodox and Greek Catholics) in Europe is to include the items we have been abstaining from during the period of fasting. For the Eastern churches, this generally includes the following: meat, eggs, dairy products, fish with backbones, alcoholic beverages, and olive oil. These reflect foods that were considered “rich men’s food.” Thus, lobster is allowed, because in olden times it would have meant crayfish, which was a poor man’s food. It is encouraged to set aside the money saved by not purchasing these foods to be used for alms.
The Easter basket is thus filled with some fairly rich food: ham, sausage, pork, and an abundance of eggs: boiled eggs and egg-rich breads such as the Paska, the traditional slightly sweet Easter bread which is often decorated with strips of the dough in the form of braids and three-bar crosses. In this country items made of chocolate (eggs, bunnies, crosses, lambs, etc.) are frequently added to the basket.
After midnight liturgy in some Eastern churches, the baskets are taken to be blessed. In our church, the priests dip a brush into holy water and sprinkle the baskets and congregants (occasionally zapping one another in a sort of gentle “holy water fight”).
Another egg-rich item found in some baskets is the hrutka, or egg cheese. Like the Paska, it is slightly sweet . Below is the recipe I use:
HRUTKA
1-1/2 quarts milk (whole or 2%)
1 dozen eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt.
Beat eggs. Heat milk in microwave until quite warm. Add about 1 cup milk to beaten eggs and stir well. Then add eggs to milk and stir well. Add salt, vanilla, and sugar to egg mixture. Start heating on high heat in microwave oven. Stir every 4-5 minutes until mixture begins to get thick. Continue cooking, stirring every few minutes until mixture gets very clumpy. (When a watery whey starts to separate out, the eggs and milk should be sufficiently cooked.) Pour into a cheesecloth bag or piece of cheesecloth. (I use slotted ladles to do this, which helps to start the process of draining.) Tie tightly, then press with spoon to remove excess liquid. Let hang several hours, or overnight. Refrigerate.
Below are some pictures of our Easter basket over the years. The second picture from the bottom shows a Paska (the candle symbolizes Christ as the Light of the World), and the bottom picture shows a row of Easter baskets getting blessed.
The Easter basket is thus filled with some fairly rich food: ham, sausage, pork, and an abundance of eggs: boiled eggs and egg-rich breads such as the Paska, the traditional slightly sweet Easter bread which is often decorated with strips of the dough in the form of braids and three-bar crosses. In this country items made of chocolate (eggs, bunnies, crosses, lambs, etc.) are frequently added to the basket.
After midnight liturgy in some Eastern churches, the baskets are taken to be blessed. In our church, the priests dip a brush into holy water and sprinkle the baskets and congregants (occasionally zapping one another in a sort of gentle “holy water fight”).
Another egg-rich item found in some baskets is the hrutka, or egg cheese. Like the Paska, it is slightly sweet . Below is the recipe I use:
HRUTKA
1-1/2 quarts milk (whole or 2%)
1 dozen eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt.
Beat eggs. Heat milk in microwave until quite warm. Add about 1 cup milk to beaten eggs and stir well. Then add eggs to milk and stir well. Add salt, vanilla, and sugar to egg mixture. Start heating on high heat in microwave oven. Stir every 4-5 minutes until mixture begins to get thick. Continue cooking, stirring every few minutes until mixture gets very clumpy. (When a watery whey starts to separate out, the eggs and milk should be sufficiently cooked.) Pour into a cheesecloth bag or piece of cheesecloth. (I use slotted ladles to do this, which helps to start the process of draining.) Tie tightly, then press with spoon to remove excess liquid. Let hang several hours, or overnight. Refrigerate.
Below are some pictures of our Easter basket over the years. The second picture from the bottom shows a Paska (the candle symbolizes Christ as the Light of the World), and the bottom picture shows a row of Easter baskets getting blessed.
Friday, April 17, 2009
20 Random Things About My Family Tree
Thanks to Jennifer Trahan of Jennifer’s Genealogy Blog for coming up with this idea – I think a lot of us genealogy bloggers prefer writing about our family tree to writing about ourselves!
1. One of my distant ancestors was the pastor of a Brooklyn church that my husband occasionally attended as a little boy with his grandfather (not the same building, I imagine, but still…).
2. Among all the Baptists, Presbyterians, and a handful of Methodists in my family tree, I was surprised to find some Quakers.
3. My great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee Jr.’s oldest child was born in 1864, and his youngest child was born in 1908 (from different wives).
4. My great-great-grandfather Joseph Madison Carroll Norman’s oldest child was born in 1856 and his youngest child was born in 1898 (he had three wives and 26 or 27 children).
5. My great-great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee Sr. and his brother George Brinlee were tried for murder during the days of the Republic of Texas.
6. My (I don’t know how-many-times-great) Uncle Micajah Clark surveyed Thomas Jefferson’s land.
7. My (?6g) grandfather Isaac Norman’s land was surveyed by George Washington.
8. My great-great-great-granduncle Collin McKinney was one of the framers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas.
9. The above-mentioned George Brinlee, from my father’s side, served under General Edward H. Tarrant, a distant relation on my mother’s side of the family.
10. I am related to Samuel Clemens through the Moorman family (not through either of my Clemens lines as far as I know).
11. I am related to John C. Calhoun through my Hamilton/Calhoun line.
12. Three great-grandfathers, two great-great grandfathers, and a slew of 2g and 3g uncles served in the Civil War. There may have been additional relatives from the Smith line who also served, but since Lizzie Smith is my big brick wall, I do not know who they are.
13. My great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee’s first wife was Dicey Caroline Boone, a great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone.
14. There are an awful lot of clergymen among my ancestors. My family and I are quite surprised at this.
15. One of my mother’s sisters had the nickname “Wreck” because it was said that she make wrecks of all her boyfriends.
16. The parents of Clarence Brinlee (my subject for A Noble Life), James Edward Brinlee and Mary Ann Sims, were first cousins.
17. Two of my first cousins once removed, Guy Leon “Square” Brinlee and Vernon Argos “Bun” Brinlee, were locally famous eccentrics. They would not hunt or kill animals not would they allow them to be killed on their farm property. They never had their house wired for electricity. They led colorful lives with several different interesting professions that I hope to tell about in a future post. There was also a rumor that “Bun” actually got married at one point when his parents (“Hoss” and Myrtie Brinlee) were out of town, but was too afraid to tell his parents, so he just returned home and never mentioned it. I believe I may have found out who he married and hope to get more of the story.
18. Several members of previous generations in my husband’s family were apparently “connected.” (Points to anyone who knows what that means. Hint: His family is from New York and New Jersey.)
19. One of my husband’s grand-uncles was a well-known pianist who died young. There are still piano roll records of him playing the piano.
20. There were Tennessee moonshiners in my older half-brother’s Roberts and Phillips lines. One of them was a bigamist and served on both sides in the Civil War (his 300-page service record contains witnesses’ statements to that effect).
1. One of my distant ancestors was the pastor of a Brooklyn church that my husband occasionally attended as a little boy with his grandfather (not the same building, I imagine, but still…).
2. Among all the Baptists, Presbyterians, and a handful of Methodists in my family tree, I was surprised to find some Quakers.
3. My great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee Jr.’s oldest child was born in 1864, and his youngest child was born in 1908 (from different wives).
4. My great-great-grandfather Joseph Madison Carroll Norman’s oldest child was born in 1856 and his youngest child was born in 1898 (he had three wives and 26 or 27 children).
5. My great-great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee Sr. and his brother George Brinlee were tried for murder during the days of the Republic of Texas.
6. My (I don’t know how-many-times-great) Uncle Micajah Clark surveyed Thomas Jefferson’s land.
7. My (?6g) grandfather Isaac Norman’s land was surveyed by George Washington.
8. My great-great-great-granduncle Collin McKinney was one of the framers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas.
9. The above-mentioned George Brinlee, from my father’s side, served under General Edward H. Tarrant, a distant relation on my mother’s side of the family.
10. I am related to Samuel Clemens through the Moorman family (not through either of my Clemens lines as far as I know).
11. I am related to John C. Calhoun through my Hamilton/Calhoun line.
12. Three great-grandfathers, two great-great grandfathers, and a slew of 2g and 3g uncles served in the Civil War. There may have been additional relatives from the Smith line who also served, but since Lizzie Smith is my big brick wall, I do not know who they are.
13. My great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee’s first wife was Dicey Caroline Boone, a great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone.
14. There are an awful lot of clergymen among my ancestors. My family and I are quite surprised at this.
15. One of my mother’s sisters had the nickname “Wreck” because it was said that she make wrecks of all her boyfriends.
16. The parents of Clarence Brinlee (my subject for A Noble Life), James Edward Brinlee and Mary Ann Sims, were first cousins.
17. Two of my first cousins once removed, Guy Leon “Square” Brinlee and Vernon Argos “Bun” Brinlee, were locally famous eccentrics. They would not hunt or kill animals not would they allow them to be killed on their farm property. They never had their house wired for electricity. They led colorful lives with several different interesting professions that I hope to tell about in a future post. There was also a rumor that “Bun” actually got married at one point when his parents (“Hoss” and Myrtie Brinlee) were out of town, but was too afraid to tell his parents, so he just returned home and never mentioned it. I believe I may have found out who he married and hope to get more of the story.
18. Several members of previous generations in my husband’s family were apparently “connected.” (Points to anyone who knows what that means. Hint: His family is from New York and New Jersey.)
19. One of my husband’s grand-uncles was a well-known pianist who died young. There are still piano roll records of him playing the piano.
20. There were Tennessee moonshiners in my older half-brother’s Roberts and Phillips lines. One of them was a bigamist and served on both sides in the Civil War (his 300-page service record contains witnesses’ statements to that effect).
Monday, April 13, 2009
Uncle, Uncle - William Henry Lewis: A Little Man Who Stood Tall
As I trace my family lines and occasionally find illustrious forbears and well-to-do descendants of common ancestors, I often make the half-joking comment to distant cousins who are fellow researchers: “I’m from the poor, anonymous branch of the family.” Taking my cue from the poverty of my parents’ families, I have a tendency to expect to find ancestors who are, well, poor and anonymous. This is also known as “making assumptions” or “jumping to conclusions,” and we all know that it is a counterproductive approach.
This, probably my greatest weakness as a researcher, may be counterbalanced by my stubbornness and drive to turn over every stone to find out everything I can about my ancestors.
And in the case of my great grand-uncle William Henry Lewis, this stubbornness was a good thing.
William Henry Lewis was in some ways the first of my Lewis kin that I “met” in my research. He was one of the witnesses on the Confederate Pension application of my great-grandfather Harlston Perrin Moore. One of the other witnesses was H. P. Moore’s wife, Martha “Mattie” Moore. At the time, I had not yet learned her maiden name. A first-cousin on my Moore side who also does family research wrote to me that an older relative had said that her maiden name was Lewis, so I figured the odds were good that Henry was probably a relative. I used their names and a few other bits of information I had on Martha to find their family in South Carolina and Georgia on the censuses, and from there went on to do as much census work and basic research as I could on Martha Lewis Moore’s siblings.
Using Henry’s age from previous censuses and his birth in South Carolina, I was able to find him and his wife Julia Mister Lewis on the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 censuses. Something was a bit strange on the last three censuses, however. On the 1910 and 1920 census, Henry and Julia were listed as roomers in the household of Virgil Rosser (Sr.), a manufacturer. Henry’s occupation was given as real estate agent. The assumption I immediately made was that he was not very successful; otherwise, wouldn’t they have been living in their own home? This was before I had done a lot of census research and had not seen how many people listed as “boarders” or “roomers” are often family members.
It was the 1930 that set me to wondering, however. On that census, Henry had sole listing as head of household at the same address, and Virgil O. Rosser Jr. was described as a “lodger” (Rosser Sr. was not listed; I did not know whether it was because he was absent or had died). To try to solve this mystery, I checked the Rosser discussion boards and found a message from a gentleman named John Hornady who descended from Virgil Rosser Sr. through Virgil’s daughter Julia Lewis Rosser. To me, this indicated a family relationship, but it seemed strange to name a relative after her married name, and the birth states for the Rossers did not match up sufficiently with either of the Lewises for there to be anything but a distant family relationship. I replied to the message and also wrote an e-mail to Mr. Hornady.
Two months later, I received a reply from Mr. Hornady (I had used an old e-mail address that he rarely checked). It was a doozey:
“When my grandmother, Bettie Curtice Rosser, died in 1908 (when my mother was eight), her close friends and mother’s godparents, the Lewises, agreed to move in and raise the four children. Virgil O. Rosser Sr. was traveling a lot on business.
“Henry, as he was called, and his wife Julia Lewis raised them and remained very close until they, the Lewises, died. They were called Duse and Dearest, and one of my aunts took care of him at the end.
“My sister and her daughter were named Julia Lewis as well.”
I was flabbergasted and delighted; this was a wonderful story I might have missed had I not tried to find out who the Rossers were and had Mr. Hornady not taken the trouble to reply. I loved Duse and Dearest already. And then, because Henry and Julia had had no children of their own, Mr. Hornady went beyond ordinary generosity and began to send me what had been left to his family from among Henry and Julia’s personal effects: letters, pictures, and a partially filled out DAR application of Julia’s cousin. Most surprising was a testimonial written in Henry Lewis’ honor by Mr. Hornady’s father, who upon his marriage to Julia Lewis Rosser became one of Henry’s biggest fans. I’ll never forget picking the document and starting to read:
“Texas was a legend and an adventure to Henry Lewis from his earliest childhood in South Carolina and he lived long enough to see some of the adventures of his early years in the state become a part of that legend.
“An extremely modest man, Mr. Lewis rarely talked of his public life in Dallas before the turn of the century but many stories of his remarkable character and simple bravery were told by his contemporaries of those two-gun days, most of whom passed from the scene many years ago.
“There was the story told about him by the late [Edwin J.] Keist, publisher of the Dallas Times-Herald. Mr. Kiest related how when he first reached Dallas as a young newspaperman out looking for a career, he got off the train and saw a large crowd surrounding the courthouse and jail. He worked his way through the crowd until he reached the gate to the jail yard. By then he realized that this was a mob bent on taking a prisoner from the jail and lynching him.
“Mr. Keist saw a slender little man sitting on the jail steps with a rifle across his knees. Then he heard this man say to the crowd: “I will shoot the first man who comes through that gate – even if he’s my brother.” And no one dared go through the gate because they knew he meant it. Soon the crowd dispersed. ‘That was my introduction to Henry Lewis,’ said Mr. Keist. ‘He was sheriff of Dallas County.’
After I picked my jaw up from the floor, I read to the end of the testimonial. There were descriptions of further heroics and Henry’s honorable career as a lawman, public servant, and active participant in the development of Dallas County, including the following:
“Another story is told of the time one of the infamous Starr brothers, notorious killers and badmen of those early days, was drunk and “shooting it up” in the local saloon. Starr, a giant of a man, ugly and especially reckless while drinking, was preventing from leaving the saloon and frightening half to death those he forced to stay there. Someone slipped out the back door and ran for Sheriff Lewis. After being apprised of the situation Mr. Lewis said mildly that he would go down and get Starr and lock him up. His informant was horrified. “But Mr. Lewis,” he cried, “where are your guns?” They’re at home,” said the sheriff. “I don’t think I’ll need them.” Mr. Lewis then walked to the saloon, entered it, stepped up to the swaggering Starr, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Come on with me, Starr.” Wheeling about Starr confronted the little sheriff half his own size, hesitated a moment and said, meekly, “All right, Henry.” With that he followed Mr. Lewis off to jail.
“Many other such stories have been told and retold about Mr. Lewis who for more than seventy years was closely identified with the growth and development of Dallas. Arriving here in 1873 from South Carolina at the age of 22 he soon became one of the leading citizens of the little pioneer western town, and in his latter years he yielded to no one in his pride in its achievements. In his middle nineties he went regularly each day to his office in the Praetorian Building where he spent most of the day talking to his friends about his beloved city. He was always much more interested in its present and its future than in its past in which he played such an important part.”
The testimonial also told of his youth and adventures in striking out on his own from South Carolina to come to Texas, and a lot of information was provided on Henry’s (and my great grandmother Martha Lewis Moore’s) family in South Carolina. There were letters written by Henry to Mr. Hornady’s father during the Second World War commenting on current events; there were love letters from Henry to Julia from the 1890s and early 1900s in which he affectionately addressed her as “My Dearest Darling Little Woman,” "My Sweet Little Woman," and -- well, you get the picture. There were letters from admiring relatives in Iowa (abolitionists from the Dalrymple side of the family who had left South Carolina) and Hawaii.
And equally important, Mr. Hornady himself provided me with information and anecdotes about Henry and Julia during the days they had helped to raise Virgil and Bettie Curtice Rosser’s children. I was awed and humbled by Mr. Hornady’s generosity and knew that telling the story of Duse and Dearest would be one of the most enjoyable research projects I would ever undertake.
I learned that Sheriff Henry Lewis had actually stopped two lynchings and that both instances had involved racial aspects. The prisoner in the first case had been a black man and the prisoner in the second had been alleged to have a black mistress. The materials provided by Mr. Hornady included a letter from a representative of the black community of Dallas County expressing gratitude for Sheriff Lewis’ actions in “suppression of the mob.”
The two pictures on the ends in the banner for this blog are Henry and Julia Lewis. Below is a picture of Henry and Julia which must have been taken in the early 1940s (Julia was born in 1868 and died in 1945; Henry was born in 1851 and died in 1946). It is obvious from the descriptions and pictures that Henry was indeed a “slender little man.” It tickled me when I learned that Henry’s younger brother John Sloan Lewis, who served as a deputy Sheriff of Dallas County, was a strapping guy of 6’4” and more than 250 pounds; the “little sheriff” and his “little” brother must have looked like Mutt and Jeff together.
Henry may have been a “slender little man,” but he was a towering figure of courage and integrity. He lived through the Civil War and through the Second World War. Equally as remarkable as his career was his loving 52-year marriage to Julia Mister and their affectionate relationship with the children they helped to raise.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Mining Obituaries: The Good, the Bad, and the Irritating
My husband thought it important enough to leave a message for me on my telephone at work: “You have a package. From South Carolina.”
Hooray! Hooray! Christmas in April! Am I going to have fun!
I don’t even have to ask you all whether you would be happy to get what was in that package.
65 obituaries. And 65 more are coming shortly. This is on top of the first 40 obituaries I ordered a few months ago from a researcher in Greenville County, South Carolina for my “Descendants of Samuel Moore” project. I am using obituaries in combination with other resources to identify descendants and add them to my file in Reunion. Each time I find a new person mentioned in an obituary, I check in the Greenville Library’s online obituary index to see whether or not the Library has an obituary on file for them; if it does, I add them to my new list of people to look up.
There are a few challenges, however.
Did you ever have to do one of those logic puzzles in which you had to match people up or associate them based on a few clues, i.e., A is married to a person E who is the sister of D, while B is the brother-in-law of a person who is not related to C, and so on? This very much resembles the mix and match game l sometimes have to play when using older obituaries, which have an irritating tendency to name married female survivors of the deceased by married names only. It often happens that I will know the names of the daughters of the deceased from censuses or other sources but do not know the names of their husbands, so I have to start fiddling around on Ancestry and the Greenville Library obituary index to get enough information to match people up. Based on my trial-and-error experience, I have one piece of advice: do not rush ahead with assumptions that A was the husband of B when you enter these people into your genealogy program.
Oh, and Captain Obvious has another piece of advice on top of this one: make sure you read the obituary carefully. Look for such pieces of “minor” information, such as how many sons and daughters the deceased is said to have had.
To take the example of an obituary I went through just the other day from The Greenville News, 30 September 1938, p. 10:
Mrs. Crayton Shirley
ANDERSON, Sept. 29 – Mrs. Crayton C. Shirley, 66, died this afternoon at the Anderson County hospital following an illness of the last three weeks.
Mrs. Shirley, a daughter of Bruce Moore and Mrs. Mary Shirley Moore, was a native and life-long resident of Anderson county and was a member of the Oakwood Baptist church. She was a resident of the Midway community east of Anderson.
Besides her husband, Mrs. Shirley is survived by five daughters and six sons, Mrs. O. D. Drake, Mrs. Luther Freeman, Mrs. Dewey Poore, Mrs. Fred Fowler and Mrs. Frank Stone; Waymon, Robert, Ansel, J. B., Grady and Leroy Shirley all of Anderson county. She also leaves two brothers and one sister, A. P. and W. D. Moore of Anderson, and Mrs. J. K. Miller of Laurens county.
The funeral services will be held at 5 o’clock Friday afternoon at Oakwood Baptist church with the Rev. E. C. White officiating. Interment will follow in Silver Brook cemetery.
From census information I had the following daughters listed for Bessie and Crayton Shirley: Ruth, Cora Corrine, Mamie, Gertrude, and Lila. I already had Corrine tentatively connected to Dewey Poore due to her distinctive name and soon found Ruth Shirley Drake in the Greenville index. This seemed to indicate that the daughters were listed in order of age, but I couldn’t take that for granted. And on top of that, there was one less husband than there were daughters, so one of the daughters had not married by that time; the question was, who was the spinster daughter?
Before I got too carried away with this line, I reread the obituary and looked back at my notes for each of the daughters. The key phrase in the obituary was “is survived by five daughters and six sons,” because when I went over my notes for Gertrude, I found the following: “Listed as a son, Gady, age 2, on the 1910 census, and as a daughter, Gertrude, age 12, on the 1920 census.” And so I did something you should never do: I made an assumption, namely, that it would have been easier to mistake the sex of a young child than an older one. It was the wrong assumption. And, of course, Grady (not Gady) was listed among the sons.
Well, lesson learned.
And, by way of a wish list, other items in obituaries that could use a little more detail, at least from the perspective of someone using obituaries for research, are: listing of (great) grandchildren by quantities rather than by name; clumping of all the sons’ children (who have the same last name) together; and referring to the appointed day for burial by day of the week instead of by day of the month (though a perpetual calendar is all that’s needed to figure out the day of the month).
One final item that I do not think is too reliably reported in obituaries, especially in older ones: military participation. The particular era that this has involved in my research is the Civil War, and it could very well be due to faulty memories. One relative, who died in 1924 at the age of 73, was reported as being a Confederate veteran. Well, perhaps he had been a young drummer boy near the end of the war, but so far I have found nothing indicating that he was.
This is not meant to be a whine-fest, as I am very grateful for the wealth of information to be found in obituaries, and I actually rather enjoy solving the puzzle they create. Moreover, more recent obituaries do seem to provide a few more details.
Hooray! Hooray! Christmas in April! Am I going to have fun!
I don’t even have to ask you all whether you would be happy to get what was in that package.
65 obituaries. And 65 more are coming shortly. This is on top of the first 40 obituaries I ordered a few months ago from a researcher in Greenville County, South Carolina for my “Descendants of Samuel Moore” project. I am using obituaries in combination with other resources to identify descendants and add them to my file in Reunion. Each time I find a new person mentioned in an obituary, I check in the Greenville Library’s online obituary index to see whether or not the Library has an obituary on file for them; if it does, I add them to my new list of people to look up.
There are a few challenges, however.
Did you ever have to do one of those logic puzzles in which you had to match people up or associate them based on a few clues, i.e., A is married to a person E who is the sister of D, while B is the brother-in-law of a person who is not related to C, and so on? This very much resembles the mix and match game l sometimes have to play when using older obituaries, which have an irritating tendency to name married female survivors of the deceased by married names only. It often happens that I will know the names of the daughters of the deceased from censuses or other sources but do not know the names of their husbands, so I have to start fiddling around on Ancestry and the Greenville Library obituary index to get enough information to match people up. Based on my trial-and-error experience, I have one piece of advice: do not rush ahead with assumptions that A was the husband of B when you enter these people into your genealogy program.
Oh, and Captain Obvious has another piece of advice on top of this one: make sure you read the obituary carefully. Look for such pieces of “minor” information, such as how many sons and daughters the deceased is said to have had.
To take the example of an obituary I went through just the other day from The Greenville News, 30 September 1938, p. 10:
Mrs. Crayton Shirley
ANDERSON, Sept. 29 – Mrs. Crayton C. Shirley, 66, died this afternoon at the Anderson County hospital following an illness of the last three weeks.
Mrs. Shirley, a daughter of Bruce Moore and Mrs. Mary Shirley Moore, was a native and life-long resident of Anderson county and was a member of the Oakwood Baptist church. She was a resident of the Midway community east of Anderson.
Besides her husband, Mrs. Shirley is survived by five daughters and six sons, Mrs. O. D. Drake, Mrs. Luther Freeman, Mrs. Dewey Poore, Mrs. Fred Fowler and Mrs. Frank Stone; Waymon, Robert, Ansel, J. B., Grady and Leroy Shirley all of Anderson county. She also leaves two brothers and one sister, A. P. and W. D. Moore of Anderson, and Mrs. J. K. Miller of Laurens county.
The funeral services will be held at 5 o’clock Friday afternoon at Oakwood Baptist church with the Rev. E. C. White officiating. Interment will follow in Silver Brook cemetery.
From census information I had the following daughters listed for Bessie and Crayton Shirley: Ruth, Cora Corrine, Mamie, Gertrude, and Lila. I already had Corrine tentatively connected to Dewey Poore due to her distinctive name and soon found Ruth Shirley Drake in the Greenville index. This seemed to indicate that the daughters were listed in order of age, but I couldn’t take that for granted. And on top of that, there was one less husband than there were daughters, so one of the daughters had not married by that time; the question was, who was the spinster daughter?
Before I got too carried away with this line, I reread the obituary and looked back at my notes for each of the daughters. The key phrase in the obituary was “is survived by five daughters and six sons,” because when I went over my notes for Gertrude, I found the following: “Listed as a son, Gady, age 2, on the 1910 census, and as a daughter, Gertrude, age 12, on the 1920 census.” And so I did something you should never do: I made an assumption, namely, that it would have been easier to mistake the sex of a young child than an older one. It was the wrong assumption. And, of course, Grady (not Gady) was listed among the sons.
Well, lesson learned.
And, by way of a wish list, other items in obituaries that could use a little more detail, at least from the perspective of someone using obituaries for research, are: listing of (great) grandchildren by quantities rather than by name; clumping of all the sons’ children (who have the same last name) together; and referring to the appointed day for burial by day of the week instead of by day of the month (though a perpetual calendar is all that’s needed to figure out the day of the month).
One final item that I do not think is too reliably reported in obituaries, especially in older ones: military participation. The particular era that this has involved in my research is the Civil War, and it could very well be due to faulty memories. One relative, who died in 1924 at the age of 73, was reported as being a Confederate veteran. Well, perhaps he had been a young drummer boy near the end of the war, but so far I have found nothing indicating that he was.
This is not meant to be a whine-fest, as I am very grateful for the wealth of information to be found in obituaries, and I actually rather enjoy solving the puzzle they create. Moreover, more recent obituaries do seem to provide a few more details.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
A Noble Life: Clarence Edward Brinlee and Ethel Lena Bennett
The word prompt for the 12th Edition of Smile For The Camera is A Noble Life. Show us a photograph of an ancestor, relative, or friend that is the embodiment of A Noble Life. A life that is worthy of those who came before and those who follow after. A Life filled with small but courageous acts; filled with love and honor. A simple life, an ordinary life, A Noble Life. Bring them to the carnival and share with us how you’ve honored them. Admission is free with every photograph!
Clarence Edward Brinlee (b. 10 April 1892, d. 22 February 1980) lost his mother, Mary Ann Sims Brinlee, when he was eight years old and his father, James Edward Brinlee, when he was 15 years old. The 1910 census shows him living with his grandfather Hiram Brinlee Jr. and step-grandmother Lizzie Brinlee in Hunt County, Texas. Also living with this family was Hiram and Lizzie’s oldest son and my grandfather, Lawrence Carroll Brinlee, who would have been Clarence’s uncle but was almost a year younger than Clarence.
Clarence and Ethel were known among the Brinlees to have taken in and taken care of numerous relatives, both close and distant, who needed help. I do not know of anything dashing or exciting in their history, but I want to know them better, and one of my self-assigned research goals is to get in touch with some of their descendants and find out more about them. One of the things about family research that surprised and delighted me was how compelling the stories of ordinary but strong and decent people like Clarence and Ethel can be. I hope to have more of their story to share in the future!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wordless Wednesday: Sisters-in-Law
Mattie Joy Campbell Moore (my Aunt Joy, 1914-2008) and Grace Madeline Moore Roberts Brinlee (my Mom, 1917-1987)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
A Threefer: Prompt #11, Saturday Night Fun, and Episode 1 of GenSpace Makeover
In my usual “day late and a dollar short” manner, I am way behind in the blogging prompts (this is #11, Share your way of tackling the record mountain and help others get organized!) and three days late for Randy Seaver’s latest Saturday Night Fun; moreover, I am not one to preach to others when my own house (literally) needs cleaning, so for this post I decided to highlight “What I Do Wrong” in my genealogy filing.
(1) Not being complete enough in backing up paper files with digital ones and digital ones with paper ones. The alert and “greenish-inclined” among you may be horrified at the second half. Why waste paper when it is better to have digital backups of digital copies? Well, it’s because I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of person, not to mention paranoid, so I indulge my paranoia in this aspect. In particular, I should have been more careful earlier to print out all e-mails with family and fellow researchers that have any connection to family research. Most of the time I did this, but I know there were lapses. One of my e-mail accounts is on AOL, and I used to use the old AOL “shell” for this. However, after a while this clunky application was wreaking havoc with my computer, so I finally gave up and switched to web-based AOL. However, none of my previous correspondence could be accessed from my browser. So … I learned my lesson. I hope.
(2) Putting binders and hanging files in awkward, hard-to-reach/see places. Two of my sets of bookshelves are actually 2’ deep plastic storage shelves from Hope Depot; they hold a lot of stuff, but the stuff in the back is hard to see and reach, especially on the top shelves. As you can see from the second picture below, my genealogy/family binders are on that top shelf. Most of my actual file drawers in my office are filled with non-genealogy files (mistake #2-1/2), so my hanging files have been relegated to a cardboard box which has another cardboard box filled with something else on top of it.
(3) Having browser bookmarks (and 75% of these bookmarks are genealogy-related) on three different computers; the categories are similar, but no single computer has a consolidated list of bookmarks.
(4) Unnecessary duplication of files. I must have at least six “General Genealogy” paper files. I do have a separate file for genealogy forms and should consolidate or sort out the remaining papers.
(5) Not having a safe for valuable items. Like Cheryl Palmer at Heritage Happens, I keep important documents and precious mementos separate from my other genealogy files, but I still have them in a portable file box. (The idea is, if the house is burning down, I grab the cats and the file box and we’re outta there.)
(6) Not having old photos properly stored, organized, scanned, and catalogued. Whether in albums or containers, they should all be located in one convenient place. I probably cannot even begin to address this problem until my office has undergone a complete makeover.
Above: My computer work area, with office supplies on the storage shelves to the left. On the wall above the desk is an icon of Sveti Ioann Rilski (St. John of Rila), a Bulgarian saint. Some people appeal to St. Anthony when they lose things. Me, I go to St. John of Rila; he looks like an absent-minded kinda guy, himself. To the left of him are some fairy-themed party favors I made for my older daughter’s first-grade birthday party (she’s now 19).
Above: Storage shelves with many of my genealogy resources and family binders. The bottom shelf contains framed documents and pictures and a couple of bins with loose pictures and other family mementos. (The second shelf from the bottom contains mostly music CDs that I have not yet added to iTunes. I simply cannot work without music.)
A hand-drawn diagram (not to scale!!) of my home office/genspace.
What’s wrong with this picture? Lots of things. Things I intend to correct during the Year of the GenSpace Makeover! (But don’t hold your breath.)
(1) Not being complete enough in backing up paper files with digital ones and digital ones with paper ones. The alert and “greenish-inclined” among you may be horrified at the second half. Why waste paper when it is better to have digital backups of digital copies? Well, it’s because I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of person, not to mention paranoid, so I indulge my paranoia in this aspect. In particular, I should have been more careful earlier to print out all e-mails with family and fellow researchers that have any connection to family research. Most of the time I did this, but I know there were lapses. One of my e-mail accounts is on AOL, and I used to use the old AOL “shell” for this. However, after a while this clunky application was wreaking havoc with my computer, so I finally gave up and switched to web-based AOL. However, none of my previous correspondence could be accessed from my browser. So … I learned my lesson. I hope.
(2) Putting binders and hanging files in awkward, hard-to-reach/see places. Two of my sets of bookshelves are actually 2’ deep plastic storage shelves from Hope Depot; they hold a lot of stuff, but the stuff in the back is hard to see and reach, especially on the top shelves. As you can see from the second picture below, my genealogy/family binders are on that top shelf. Most of my actual file drawers in my office are filled with non-genealogy files (mistake #2-1/2), so my hanging files have been relegated to a cardboard box which has another cardboard box filled with something else on top of it.
(3) Having browser bookmarks (and 75% of these bookmarks are genealogy-related) on three different computers; the categories are similar, but no single computer has a consolidated list of bookmarks.
(4) Unnecessary duplication of files. I must have at least six “General Genealogy” paper files. I do have a separate file for genealogy forms and should consolidate or sort out the remaining papers.
(5) Not having a safe for valuable items. Like Cheryl Palmer at Heritage Happens, I keep important documents and precious mementos separate from my other genealogy files, but I still have them in a portable file box. (The idea is, if the house is burning down, I grab the cats and the file box and we’re outta there.)
(6) Not having old photos properly stored, organized, scanned, and catalogued. Whether in albums or containers, they should all be located in one convenient place. I probably cannot even begin to address this problem until my office has undergone a complete makeover.
Above: My computer work area, with office supplies on the storage shelves to the left. On the wall above the desk is an icon of Sveti Ioann Rilski (St. John of Rila), a Bulgarian saint. Some people appeal to St. Anthony when they lose things. Me, I go to St. John of Rila; he looks like an absent-minded kinda guy, himself. To the left of him are some fairy-themed party favors I made for my older daughter’s first-grade birthday party (she’s now 19).
Above: Storage shelves with many of my genealogy resources and family binders. The bottom shelf contains framed documents and pictures and a couple of bins with loose pictures and other family mementos. (The second shelf from the bottom contains mostly music CDs that I have not yet added to iTunes. I simply cannot work without music.)
A hand-drawn diagram (not to scale!!) of my home office/genspace.
What’s wrong with this picture? Lots of things. Things I intend to correct during the Year of the GenSpace Makeover! (But don’t hold your breath.)
Monday, April 6, 2009
Memory Monday: Junk in Our Yard
I must have been around seven or eight years old when I started to get an inkling that it might not be socially acceptable to have junk lying around in one’s yard. My mother frequently and emphatically expressed this sentiment in reference to my father’s many mechanical projects sitting in our yard in various stages of (in)completion.
The offending items were not in the front yard, of course; my mother would not have allowed that. In our yard on Pico Street in San Bernardino, this meant that the junk was, for all practical purposes, safely hidden away in the back yard (unless one peered straight back along the left side of the house and had the experienced eye to spot the outlines of a car chassis). On Lankershim Street in Highland, however, this concealment ploy was not so successful. The lot was a deep one, with our house, similarly long and narrow, situated lengthwise somewhat to the side so that on one side you could see all the way to the back of the lot, where there was usually at least one nonfunctioning vehicle. And you could always tell that the vehicle was nonfunctioning, whether from its obvious great age, bad paint job, or position atop blocks.
Below is a picture of this lot (and that's my Dad working on the driveway): on the left from front to back are the corner of our house, the garage, and a rental house in the vary back, and in front of that house is the obligatory “heap of junk.” A different “heap of junk” can been seen in the picture of me with our dogs accompanying my post, Memory Monday: Pets, Part I. (I believe the truck in that picture actually ran.)
Then there was Dad’s tractor. As far as I remember, he built it himself. He must have acquired the parts from junkyards; Dad was the kind of guy who would have known all the local junkyard owners and scrap dealers on a first-name basis. The picture below was taken at our house on Pico Street; though the ostensible purpose of the picture was to show off my Easter duds, one’s attention cannot fail to be lured to the tableau of my father and my brother Don celebrating Easter in their own preferred way.
Some people have fountains, statues, or other types of “lawn art” in their yards. I guess you could say that we had “mixed-media” sculptures in ours. As they say, some people’s junk is other people’s art.
The offending items were not in the front yard, of course; my mother would not have allowed that. In our yard on Pico Street in San Bernardino, this meant that the junk was, for all practical purposes, safely hidden away in the back yard (unless one peered straight back along the left side of the house and had the experienced eye to spot the outlines of a car chassis). On Lankershim Street in Highland, however, this concealment ploy was not so successful. The lot was a deep one, with our house, similarly long and narrow, situated lengthwise somewhat to the side so that on one side you could see all the way to the back of the lot, where there was usually at least one nonfunctioning vehicle. And you could always tell that the vehicle was nonfunctioning, whether from its obvious great age, bad paint job, or position atop blocks.
Below is a picture of this lot (and that's my Dad working on the driveway): on the left from front to back are the corner of our house, the garage, and a rental house in the vary back, and in front of that house is the obligatory “heap of junk.” A different “heap of junk” can been seen in the picture of me with our dogs accompanying my post, Memory Monday: Pets, Part I. (I believe the truck in that picture actually ran.)
Then there was Dad’s tractor. As far as I remember, he built it himself. He must have acquired the parts from junkyards; Dad was the kind of guy who would have known all the local junkyard owners and scrap dealers on a first-name basis. The picture below was taken at our house on Pico Street; though the ostensible purpose of the picture was to show off my Easter duds, one’s attention cannot fail to be lured to the tableau of my father and my brother Don celebrating Easter in their own preferred way.
Some people have fountains, statues, or other types of “lawn art” in their yards. I guess you could say that we had “mixed-media” sculptures in ours. As they say, some people’s junk is other people’s art.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Blogging Prompt 13: My Area of Expertise
Have expertise in a specific area of study? Share your knowledge!
There is nothing much in my educational background or professional life that is specifically useful in genealogy. As I wrote in Will Translate for Genealogy Help, languages are my thing. This might be helpful in researching my husband’s family, branches of which are from Germany, Italy, and Romania, but these are not the languages I have studied, though I do remember a smattering of German. My college major was Russian language, in graduate school I spread out to Slavic Studies, and as a professional linguist I have studied a few more languages, both in classroom settings and on my own. Russian is still my strongest language, but I also translate from Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian and Georgian, can do Serbian, Croatian and Slovene in a pinch, and would try my hand at Macedonian and Bosnian if someone is desperate.
I know that many people think there is no long a need to resort to a professional translator when there are things out there like Google Translate, Babelfish, and other computer (“machine”) translation applications, and these applications can in fact be useful in identifying documents and translating material with uncomplicated syntax and ordinary vocabulary. And it is possible to some extent to sort out some of the odd constructions and word choices into passable English, but – and this is a big “but” – the accuracy of the results cannot be trusted with a high degree of certainty. The same can of course be said of human translations. A “smooth” but inaccurate translation of either sort can be dangerous; it “sounds” correct and so is trusted. So, my advice is if you have documents of more than basic difficulty, find a reputable translator to translate them for you.
As for how my skills can help others, I would say that I can produce at least a decent translation or gist from these languages. In addition, the need to research often obscure subjects for my translations has led to the formation of decent research skills and knowledge of some handy search tricks, not to mention knowledge of potentially useful pieces of trivia. And as those of us who pursue genealogy know, those obscure bits of information can come in handy when you least expect it.
And it we take the word “area” in “area of study” to refer to a geographical area, then I could say that I am becoming quite familiar with the following counties: Anderson and Greenville in South Carolina and Baylor, Dallas, Collin, and Fannin counties in Texas.
There is nothing much in my educational background or professional life that is specifically useful in genealogy. As I wrote in Will Translate for Genealogy Help, languages are my thing. This might be helpful in researching my husband’s family, branches of which are from Germany, Italy, and Romania, but these are not the languages I have studied, though I do remember a smattering of German. My college major was Russian language, in graduate school I spread out to Slavic Studies, and as a professional linguist I have studied a few more languages, both in classroom settings and on my own. Russian is still my strongest language, but I also translate from Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian and Georgian, can do Serbian, Croatian and Slovene in a pinch, and would try my hand at Macedonian and Bosnian if someone is desperate.
I know that many people think there is no long a need to resort to a professional translator when there are things out there like Google Translate, Babelfish, and other computer (“machine”) translation applications, and these applications can in fact be useful in identifying documents and translating material with uncomplicated syntax and ordinary vocabulary. And it is possible to some extent to sort out some of the odd constructions and word choices into passable English, but – and this is a big “but” – the accuracy of the results cannot be trusted with a high degree of certainty. The same can of course be said of human translations. A “smooth” but inaccurate translation of either sort can be dangerous; it “sounds” correct and so is trusted. So, my advice is if you have documents of more than basic difficulty, find a reputable translator to translate them for you.
As for how my skills can help others, I would say that I can produce at least a decent translation or gist from these languages. In addition, the need to research often obscure subjects for my translations has led to the formation of decent research skills and knowledge of some handy search tricks, not to mention knowledge of potentially useful pieces of trivia. And as those of us who pursue genealogy know, those obscure bits of information can come in handy when you least expect it.
And it we take the word “area” in “area of study” to refer to a geographical area, then I could say that I am becoming quite familiar with the following counties: Anderson and Greenville in South Carolina and Baylor, Dallas, Collin, and Fannin counties in Texas.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Featured Family Friday: Harlston Perrin Moore and Martha E. “Mattie” Lewis
I am so excited to be starting a series of posts on my Moore family (and ultimately the Lewis family as well). These families are my #1 research focus – not because I love them more than my other families, but because so little research had been done on them, or at least on my particular branch in the case of the Lewises. I have recently been contacted by a 3rd cousin on the Floyd side, so I am hoping my blog posts on the Moores may produce similar results. Another element in this strategy will be to post queries on these families in the genealogy discussion boards such as GenForum and the Rootsweb boards.
Harlston Perrin Moore
b. 4 Dec 1845, Anderson Co., South Carolina
d. 12 Dec 1921, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
& Martha E. “Mattie” Lewis
b. 8 Nov 1848, Franklin Co., Georgia
d. 22 Sep 1930, Plano, Collin Co., Texas
m. 3 Dec 1865, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|--William H. Moore
|----b. 1869, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. bef Oct 1950
|--Mary M. Moore
|----b. 1871, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|-----d. bef Oct 1950
|--Etta Marie Moore
|----b. 5 Jun 1875, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. 12 Jan 1959, Garland, Dallas, Texas
|--& Lee Elmo Campbell
|----b. 21 Feb 1873, Dallas Co., Texas
|----d. 18 May 1935, Dallas Co., Texas
|----m. 1894
|--Rosalie/Rosa Lee Moore
|----b. 24 Aug 1877, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. 22 Nov 1953, Kern County, California
|--& Clifton Randolph “Cliff” Brownlee
|----b. 14 Jan 1878, Lancaster, Texas
|----d. 19 Jan 1932, Lubbock Co., Texas
|----m. 1905
|--Kirby Runion Moore
|----b. 29 Apr 1880, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|----d. 1 Oct 1950, Baylor County Hospital, Seymour, TX
|--& Eula Amanda Floyd
|----b. 3 Sep 1883, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|----d. 9 Jun 1972, Torrance, CA
|----m. 14 Nov 1907, Oak Cliff, Texas
|--Claude Moore
|----b. 12 Nov 1882, Dallas County, TX
|----d. 24 Feb 1955, Wichita Falls, Wichita, Texas
|--& Dona Pearl Philips
|----b. 10 Apr 1887, Texas
|----d. 2 Sep 1955, California
|----m. 1906
|--Luther Lee Moore
|----b. 31 Mar 1885, Dallas County, TX
|----d. Mar 1967, 85009 Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
|--& Ethel Clara England
|----b. Nov 1895
|----m. 1914
|--Clyde Harlston Moore
|----b. 3 Aug 1889, Dallas Co., Texas
|----d. 18 Aug 1970, Allen, Collin County, Texas
|--& UNNAMED
|----Preston Earl Moore
|--b. 24 Nov 1891, Dallas County, TX
|----d. 18 Oct 1963, McKinney, Collin County, Texas
|--& UNNAMED
From the above two-generation descendant report you can see that there are a lot of gaps, but there aren’t nearly as many as I started out with. This is my mother’s father’s family (he is the Kirby Runion Moore), and when I began, I only knew part of his father’s name: Perrin Moore. You can read about how I began finding his family in my Getting Hooked on Genealogy series of posts.
Harlston Perrin Moore was the son of William Spencer Moore and Emily Tarrant of Anderson County, South Carolina, and Martha E. Lewis was the daughter of Elisha Berry Lewis and Martha Poole of Anderson County, South Carolina. During the Civil War H. P. Moore served in Company G, 2nd Battalion, South Carolina Reserves, one of the “old men and little boys” units (he was about 17 years old when he enlisted in the unit). Most of Private Harlston Perrin Moore’s duty would have consisted of guarding Union officers who were prisoners at Camp Sorghum (described at http://www.geocities.com/cmp_csa/index.html), located outside of Columbia and so nicknamed because the main rations there consisted of cornmeal and sorghum molasses. The prison was actually “an open field, a five-acre track of cleared ground without walls, fences, buildings, a ditch, or any other facilities.” There were many escapes. Conditions were poor for both inmates and guards. The witnesses on H. P. Moore’s Confederate Pension Application state that he served through the end of the war, so he probably also saw duty when the prison camp was moved to a mental asylum in Columbia, South Carolina which came to be called Camp Asylum (also Camp Lunacy).
The date of H. P. Moore’s and Martha Lewis’ Marriage is given as 3 December 1864 (“while on furlough”) in H. P. Moore’s Confederation Pension Application; however, on the 1910 US Federal Census for Justice Precinct 5, Dallas Co., Texas (Enumeration District 94, Sheet No. 13A, 3 May 1910) H. P. and Martha indicate that they have been married 42 years, which would point to 1867 or 1868 as the year of their marriage. 1877 is the year cited in the pension application as the year they moved to Texas and this is consistent with the states of birth listed for their children in the censuses. H. P. Moore’s name appears on an 1877 map of Hopewell Township, Anderson County, South Carolina; the farm (this would have been the farm he inherited from his father William Spencer Moore) is slightly to the south of Twenty-Six Mile Creek.
The main gaps in my information for the children of H. P. Moore and Martha Lewis are for the two oldest, William H. Moore and Mary M. Moore. The 1900 census indicates that one of their nine children had died by then, and I have been unable to determine whether it was William or Mary. I am working on the possibility that a Mary M. Harvey, shown on the 1900 census for Dallas County as the wife of Thomas Harvey, may be this Mary M. Moore. The month and date given for her birth, December 1870, would be consistent with the calculated year of 1871 from the 1880 census for Dallas County, and South Carolina is given as the state of her and her parents’ birth. The October 1950 obituary for my Grandfather Kirby Moore does not list either William or Mary, so I am guessing that both had died by 1950. I would also like to find the names of the wives of Clyde Harlston Moore and Preston Earl Moore. I did not know that either of them had married until I found their death certificates on the Family Search pilot site. The informant for both death certificates was given as Mrs. Clyde Moore, and she indicated on Preston Earl Moore’s certificate that he was divorced.
If any descendant of this family or other person researching this family reads this, please contact me.
Harlston Perrin Moore
b. 4 Dec 1845, Anderson Co., South Carolina
d. 12 Dec 1921, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
& Martha E. “Mattie” Lewis
b. 8 Nov 1848, Franklin Co., Georgia
d. 22 Sep 1930, Plano, Collin Co., Texas
m. 3 Dec 1865, Anderson Co., South Carolina
|--William H. Moore
|----b. 1869, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. bef Oct 1950
|--Mary M. Moore
|----b. 1871, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|-----d. bef Oct 1950
|--Etta Marie Moore
|----b. 5 Jun 1875, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. 12 Jan 1959, Garland, Dallas, Texas
|--& Lee Elmo Campbell
|----b. 21 Feb 1873, Dallas Co., Texas
|----d. 18 May 1935, Dallas Co., Texas
|----m. 1894
|--Rosalie/Rosa Lee Moore
|----b. 24 Aug 1877, South Carolina (probably Anderson Co.)
|----d. 22 Nov 1953, Kern County, California
|--& Clifton Randolph “Cliff” Brownlee
|----b. 14 Jan 1878, Lancaster, Texas
|----d. 19 Jan 1932, Lubbock Co., Texas
|----m. 1905
|--Kirby Runion Moore
|----b. 29 Apr 1880, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|----d. 1 Oct 1950, Baylor County Hospital, Seymour, TX
|--& Eula Amanda Floyd
|----b. 3 Sep 1883, Lancaster, Dallas Co., TX
|----d. 9 Jun 1972, Torrance, CA
|----m. 14 Nov 1907, Oak Cliff, Texas
|--Claude Moore
|----b. 12 Nov 1882, Dallas County, TX
|----d. 24 Feb 1955, Wichita Falls, Wichita, Texas
|--& Dona Pearl Philips
|----b. 10 Apr 1887, Texas
|----d. 2 Sep 1955, California
|----m. 1906
|--Luther Lee Moore
|----b. 31 Mar 1885, Dallas County, TX
|----d. Mar 1967, 85009 Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
|--& Ethel Clara England
|----b. Nov 1895
|----m. 1914
|--Clyde Harlston Moore
|----b. 3 Aug 1889, Dallas Co., Texas
|----d. 18 Aug 1970, Allen, Collin County, Texas
|--& UNNAMED
|----Preston Earl Moore
|--b. 24 Nov 1891, Dallas County, TX
|----d. 18 Oct 1963, McKinney, Collin County, Texas
|--& UNNAMED
From the above two-generation descendant report you can see that there are a lot of gaps, but there aren’t nearly as many as I started out with. This is my mother’s father’s family (he is the Kirby Runion Moore), and when I began, I only knew part of his father’s name: Perrin Moore. You can read about how I began finding his family in my Getting Hooked on Genealogy series of posts.
Harlston Perrin Moore was the son of William Spencer Moore and Emily Tarrant of Anderson County, South Carolina, and Martha E. Lewis was the daughter of Elisha Berry Lewis and Martha Poole of Anderson County, South Carolina. During the Civil War H. P. Moore served in Company G, 2nd Battalion, South Carolina Reserves, one of the “old men and little boys” units (he was about 17 years old when he enlisted in the unit). Most of Private Harlston Perrin Moore’s duty would have consisted of guarding Union officers who were prisoners at Camp Sorghum (described at http://www.geocities.com/cmp_csa/index.html), located outside of Columbia and so nicknamed because the main rations there consisted of cornmeal and sorghum molasses. The prison was actually “an open field, a five-acre track of cleared ground without walls, fences, buildings, a ditch, or any other facilities.” There were many escapes. Conditions were poor for both inmates and guards. The witnesses on H. P. Moore’s Confederate Pension Application state that he served through the end of the war, so he probably also saw duty when the prison camp was moved to a mental asylum in Columbia, South Carolina which came to be called Camp Asylum (also Camp Lunacy).
The date of H. P. Moore’s and Martha Lewis’ Marriage is given as 3 December 1864 (“while on furlough”) in H. P. Moore’s Confederation Pension Application; however, on the 1910 US Federal Census for Justice Precinct 5, Dallas Co., Texas (Enumeration District 94, Sheet No. 13A, 3 May 1910) H. P. and Martha indicate that they have been married 42 years, which would point to 1867 or 1868 as the year of their marriage. 1877 is the year cited in the pension application as the year they moved to Texas and this is consistent with the states of birth listed for their children in the censuses. H. P. Moore’s name appears on an 1877 map of Hopewell Township, Anderson County, South Carolina; the farm (this would have been the farm he inherited from his father William Spencer Moore) is slightly to the south of Twenty-Six Mile Creek.
The main gaps in my information for the children of H. P. Moore and Martha Lewis are for the two oldest, William H. Moore and Mary M. Moore. The 1900 census indicates that one of their nine children had died by then, and I have been unable to determine whether it was William or Mary. I am working on the possibility that a Mary M. Harvey, shown on the 1900 census for Dallas County as the wife of Thomas Harvey, may be this Mary M. Moore. The month and date given for her birth, December 1870, would be consistent with the calculated year of 1871 from the 1880 census for Dallas County, and South Carolina is given as the state of her and her parents’ birth. The October 1950 obituary for my Grandfather Kirby Moore does not list either William or Mary, so I am guessing that both had died by 1950. I would also like to find the names of the wives of Clyde Harlston Moore and Preston Earl Moore. I did not know that either of them had married until I found their death certificates on the Family Search pilot site. The informant for both death certificates was given as Mrs. Clyde Moore, and she indicated on Preston Earl Moore’s certificate that he was divorced.
If any descendant of this family or other person researching this family reads this, please contact me.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wordless Wednesday: Howard and Joy Moore
Howard Lee Moore and Mattie Joy Campbell Moore (my Uncle Howard and Aunt Joy)
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