Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: I’m on TV!

Here is Randy Seaver’s (Genea-Musings) latest genea-challenge:

1) Pretend that you are one of the subjects on the Who Do You Think You Are? show on NBC TV.

2) Which of your ancestors (maximum of two) would be featured on your hour-long show? What stories would be told, and what places would you visit?

The first ancestor I would feature would be my great-great uncle, William Henry Lewis, who was the sheriff of Dallas County from 1886 to 1892. We would start out at his birthplace, Anderson County, South Carolina. Further research would put us in contact with John Hornady, the gentleman who provided me with so much information and generously passed to me the Lewis family artifacts (letters, documents, pictures) that he had in his possession. This would give us information on Henry’s adventures as sheriff – stopping two lynchings, bringing in various other criminals, and others – as well as his marriage to the love of his life, Julia Mister, and their role in bringing up the children of Julia’s good friend Bettie Curtice Rosser following Bettie’s death. That portion of the show would take part in Dallas County. It would be neat if we could locate and interview descendants of A. C. Thurman, the gentleman who wrote the letter featured in one of the posts below.

The second relative would probably be my great-great grandfather Hiram Brinlee, Sr. We would tell the story of how he and his brother George went from Kentucky to Texas with Collin and Daniel McKinney and how the two brothers married Daniel McKinney’s daughters. The second part of the story would cover their trial(s) for murder and attempted murder during the days of the Republic of Texas. Locations would be Collin County, Texas, specifically the “Four Corners” of Texas where Grayson, Fannin, Hunt, and Collin counties meet, as well as a repository holding records of the Republic of Texas.

[The genea-geek in me actually wants to cover the story of my great-great uncle Preston Moore as related in Searching for Preston Moore, but that’s probably not considered exciting enough for prime-time TV.]