Friday, June 4, 2010

Family and Friends Newsletter Friday 4 June 2010

It has been a busy couple of weeks (I see it has been three weeks since I have written a newsletter – too busy and too tired).

Research

As far as genealogy goes, busy in a good way.

Norman

I have finally finished up the current stage of Norman research (not that it’s complete, but I have a good framework for “Descendants of Joseph Madison Carroll Norman”). What a relief!

One interesting item that popped up in this last bit of research was that in addition to the two cousins that I attended high school with – a first and second cousin on my mother’s side (and, of course, I was aware that they were my cousins), I have found a second cousin once removed (on my father’s side) who also attended the same high school, a year before me. Joseph Madison Carroll Norman was her great-grandfather and my great-great grandfather; her grandmother was the youngest of JMC’s children to have descendants and my great-grandfather was the oldest one to have descendants and was about 40 years older than her grandmother.

Another item that turned up when I logged onto Ancestry was a note under “Recent Member Connect Activity” that someone had downloaded a document on Rhuea Mae Brown, my great-uncle Oby Norman’s second wife, whom I always knew as “Aunt Rhuea.” When I clicked on the connection, it took me to a Public Member Tree with lots of pictures of Aunt Rhuea when she was younger. What a treat!

Brinlee

Now it’s onto Brinlee research, and a number of things have been happening to tell me that it’s time to work on the Brinlee line!

I have been contacted by a gentleman who grew up near Bun and Square Brinlee, colorful cousins of my father about whom there are quite a few stories. They lived very interesting lives, and as they lived their later years on the family farm without electricity or other type of power, were viewed as being a bit eccentric. From this gentlemen’s memories, as well as those of another man who actually wrote a book based on the conversations he had with the brothers when he was growing up, they were apparently quite beloved figures in the area. I have really enjoyed the memories that the two men have shared about the brothers.

To see if any of my other cousins on the Brinlee side had any information to share on Bun and Square, I sent out an e-mail. So far no additional information on this account, but one of the cousins did have some fabulous Brinlee research news: a DNA match has been found for one of “our” Brinlees among the descendants of a line of Brinleys/Brindleys/Brindlees in Tennessee – there had been some interest in these families, but we could not prove any connection. This is a whole new avenue to research, quite a bit more than what we had before.

Moore

I have been contacted by two Moore researchers this week, one through Footnote (from the descendant of a heretofore unknown brother of my great-great-grandfather William Spencer Moore) and one through an old GenForum post. I guess this shows that it is a good idea to have “cast a wide net” for information on ancestors. So, along those lines…

Ancestry Public Member Trees

I have not made a definite decision, yet, but I may go ahead and start some PMTs on Ancestry, probably four – one for each of my parents and my husband’s parents. I will not upload any GEDCOMs, but instead will just gradually add information.

So, in short – this has been a great week for finding new contacts and adding information from them!

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