Greenville 2

More Swamp Rabbit Trail:

Greek Culture Day on Main Street:

The West End of Greenville

 (where Shoeless Joe Jackson, the old Coca Cola Plant, and the Cigar Plant
figure prominently)

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Signs

Permanent sidewalk art

Post-Conference Letdown

Post-conference letdown. I did not experience it. Because today, 15 May, was a perfect day.

Today we left Charleston and headed toward Orangeburg to meet my second cousin once removed, Rebecca, and her husband Danny.

I am so proud to be related to these people, both genetically and through marriage. We got a running start in exchanging information, and didn’t let up the pace for two and a half hours. Rebecca and I did a “fast talking” data swap: family stories, what we had found in research, and as much incidental information as we could pack in between all of that. Stu and Danny talked about their areas of interest. Our (Koehl) daughters observed and laughed. Daughter #1 later confided to me, “Mom, you and Rebecca have the exact same body language; it’s so funny to watch the two of you together.”

Rebecca is a first-rate researcher and brought a pile of copied documents with her to give to me. Prior to becoming really active in genealogical research, she obtained some bootcamp-intensity experience in going through courthouse records, and the stuff she had shows it. My friends, she brought me a goldmine. Not only lots of records, but also several family reminiscences. This branch of the family, the last one I found in that exciting first year of research, is really starting to come alive for me. I am so excited about the prospect of having Rebecca to exchange information with. I was initially disappointed when, after I found this branch of the family, I saw that it has been well researched. But Rebecca and I have some ideas on some of the broken off branches....

After saying farewell to Rebecca and Danny, we headed for Greenville. As we approached Main Street and familiar landmarks came into view, I realized that I was smiling and could not stop. I roused the girls from their slumber and started to point things out: “Look, here is Main Street; see how the trees shade it over?” It was the last day of Greenville’s annual art festival, Artisphere, and we could see a long line of tents along the street near our hotel.

Right after we had checked in and checked out our room, we headed down the stairs from the hotel to the Reedy River below and Falls Park. It was as beautiful as I remembered it. I had hoped that the girls would like Greenville and turned around to see their expressions: they were as enchanted as Stu and I had been on our first visit! We stood on Liberty Bridge, a long, curved pedestrian suspension bridge. At one point we watched a pair of jugglers on the rocks in the river below juggle and toss pins to one another (some landed in the river, but were confined to a small pool between rocks).

We walked over to the art festival, visited some of the booths, and spoke to craftsmen and artists from all over the United States. We checked out a bit more of the park and then walked down Main Street toward the far end to eat at our favorite Japanese restaurant in Greenville. The food was as good as we remembered it. Daughter #2 stated that she wants to live in Greenville some day. On the way back we spotted three of the legendary little bronze mice of Greenville that can be found along Main Street if you look carefully.

After dinner we showed the girls Linky Stone Park, the children’s park under the overpass that we visited last time, and they were enthralled. We spent a good bit of time playing the musical instruments (bells, percussion, and an instrument made with PVC pipes (difficult to describe, but there is a small round opening in the top of each one, and if you quickly pop your hand on the top of it, it will produce the musical note with which each pipe is labeled).

There were still many people out walking and enjoying the fountains: families with little kids who splashed through street-level fountains, artists, bicyclists, and lots of people with their pets, including a guy walking his rabbit. I stopped to talk with him for a while to see how his rabbit takes to all of the people (quite well) and told him about our daughters’ second-grade teacher and the beloved rabbit she often brought to the classroom with her.  He admitted that he has really spoiled his beloved rabbit, but I noted that she is certainly well behaved in public.

Here are a few pictures from our first day in Greenville:

Jugglers on the Reedy River

Some of the falls on the Reedy River

Rabbit out for a walk

Mouse with hat next to statue of Nathaniel Greene

View of Linky Stone Park

Bells in Linky Stone Park

"PVC pipe organ"

[This was written yesterday but not posted until today.]

Day One at NGS Charleston

My first day at the NGS Conference was fabulous and mind-blasting, and it followed a wonderful evening at the Genealogy Bloggers’ dinner hosted by FamilySearch.

Last year at FGS in Knoxville I learned my lesson - never skip the Opening Session. And this year’s Opening Session did not disappoint. It started out with the Charleston Police Pipes and Drums marching into the auditorium to “Scotland the Brave.” They performed several pieces and were followed by the Knights of Columbus as honor guard for the flag and a lovely young student from a local school who sang the National Anthem as beautifully as I’ve ever heard it sung. Several awards were given and there were a couple of drawings (paid NGS Conference in Cincinnati, a week at a hotel in Salt Lake City, and a genealogy tour in Salt Lake City).

Charleston Police Pipes and Drums

Oh, yeah, the “big news,” which my more technologically with-it fellow genealogy bloggers have already tweeted, is that NGS 2013 will be in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The first opening session speaker was David Ferriero, Chief Archivist of the United States; he was followed by Buzzy Jackson, author of Shaking the Family Tree. Some bullets from Ferriero’s presentation were:

• There were 5000 attendees at NARA’s genealogy fair this year.
• He outlined the complete reorganization along the lines of a Five Year Plan that NARA is in the process of carrying out, which has been dictated by several circumstances: the need to adapt to new technology and new tools, to reach out to the public through social media (NARA has 11 blogs, 29 Facebook pages, a YouTube site, and is on Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare, and has created an Online Public Portal for public access to digitized records), and to improve employee satisfaction in an agency that used to be known as one of the worst to work for in the US Government.
• There are a number of initiatives for a customer-based organization, such as a Research Customer Support Unit, a new unit for developing online content, etc.

When Ferriero opened the floor for questions, most of them had to do with the launch of the 1940 census. “Has it been indexed?” - “Sort of.” “Do you have the server capacity?” - “Yes; after all, I have a lot of experience in launching websites without testing server capacity” (referring the the crash of the New York Public Library system within three hours of launching due to unanticipated demand).

Buzzy Jackson proved to be a wonderful speaker, with much that the audience could identify with. She refers to herself as an “accidental genealogist” who knows what it’s like to start from zero. She was full of praise for the people in the Boulder Genealogical Society who helped her get started and for the Jackson cousin who provided her with so much information on the family - and who, it turned out, was in the audience - the two had met in person for the first time today. (Have to interject here that I just received an e-mail from a distant cousin last night who has read my blog and learned that we will be going to Greenville after Charleston - she lives sort of on the way and we are going to try and meet up.) Buzzy had many fascinating anecdotes and I do not want to blab them all, but I just have to mention one remark that cracked me up and that we can definitely identify with - describing her visit to a remote, neglected graveyard:

“And then we saw the Welcome sign for genealogists: ‘No Trespassing.’”

As we all left at the end of the session and headed toward the Exhibit Hall, we were serenaded by a Gullah choir who were quite amazing. Among other songs, they sang “Give Me That Old-Time Religion” and “Amazing Grace.” We were absolutely entranced, and many sang along and clapped in rhythm.

Gullah Choir

Possibly the main highlight of FGS Knoxville was meeting my fellow genealogy bloggers and getting to hang out with them some. That has been even more applicable here in Charleston. I was able to reconnect with Linda McCauley of Documenting the Details, Kimberley Powell of About.com, and Paula Stuart Warren of Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica, and also met Ginger Smith of Genealogy by Ginger, Jennifer Woods of Climbing My Family Tree, Liz Tapley-Matthews of My Tapley Tree, Cheryl Cayemberg of Have You Seen My Roots?, and Audrey Collins from The Family Recorder. (Oh, and I managed to get too involved in talking and missed meeting Dick Eastman of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.) It has been delightful sharing experiences with these people, and on top of that there were many excellent conversations with people at the booths and other people I met there. One of my favorite experiences was finally meeting DearMyrtle, who is truly one of the great ladies of genealogy and blogging.

Presentations: Today I attended “Finding Fathers: Bridging the Generation Gap” by Elizabeth Shown Mills and “When Sources Don’t Agree, Then What?” by Thomas W. Jones. Expectations were high; both delivered; what else can you say?

Goodies: So far, so good - meaning, I haven’t totally lost control and so far have bought only four books. I did look at the Flip-Pal and I picked up a brochure and order form, but at the price (and considering how much we have spent already), I may still wait until Christmas to get one. One really neat freebie for conference attendees is a card with a code with which we can access Archives.com free for a year. I hope to put it to good use and to blog about what I am able to find on the site.

In Charleston

St. Matthew's Church (Lutheran)

A baby bird my daughter noticed hiding in the undergrowth

in Marion Square

The old Kress building

Pharmacy

St. Michael's Church (Huguenot)

Courthouse Square - Confederate Memorial Day ceremony

Inside The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon

Remains of the original sea walls of Charleston

under The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon

St. Phillips (Episcopal)

The Circular Church (United Church of Christ)

Building of the Daughters of the Confederacy

On Our Way

Tonight we are in Charleston, but our trip started yesterday. We stopped midway last night in Wilson, North Carolina. On the way there we stopped in Petersburg, Virginia.

Important things to remember when you are traveling:

Mother's Day is not a good day to be on the road. Especially if you plan to stop and eat anywhere. Most especially if you plan to stop and eat somewhere, do not have reservations, and do not want to spend a long time waiting to get into a restaurant.

We did not have reservations. We thought we were smart because we had eaten up all of our perishables (= all of our good breakfast foods) before we left. We were not smart.

The good news? Americans love their mothers. Because, as far as I can judge, everyone was busy taking their mothers out to brunch and then again out to dinner on Mother's Day. We did finally manage to get something to eat.

Here are a few scenes from Petersburg. It was not very active. Everyone was out to lunch with Mom.

Granary used as a holding cell for Union prisoners

Train station on the Southside Railroad

Then today we stopped at ...

Things that are important at South of the Border:

Pedro

Fireworks and Bread

Spark plugs

Animals of all types

Pets even have their own toilets

Some of My Favorite South Carolina Resources

As I went through all of my bookmarked links for South Carolina so that I can update and supplement the links on my blog, I copied them into a Word document. It occurred to me when I looked at all the links that I might as well post some of these.

Since a lot of my current research is focused on Anderson and Greenville Counties, those account for a lot of the links I’m going to post, as does a predecessor entity, Pendleton.

And, of course, it should be mentioned, the best resources of all are found by actually visiting the areas in person. However, you can still get a lot of preparatory research done through these websites.


The South Carolina Department of Archives and History

This is the place to start for SC research online. There are a number of documents held at SCDAH that appear on searchable (by name and location) indices or even have scanned images you can bring up on the website.


My South Carolina Genealogy

One of the most extensive listing of South Carolina links.


SC Historical County Lines

This website contains links to various historical maps, including county formation maps (such as SC’s map at FamilyHistory101) and maps of battles.


David Rumsay Map Collection – Pendleton District, South Carolina


South Carolina GenWeb

Lists of useful links in four major categories: SC County Sites, Statewide Records, Reference and Research Helps, and Essays and Special Research Topics.


Ancestors: Resource Guide – South Carolina

Part of BYU’s state-by-state listing of resources.


Rootsweb’s list of South Carolina-related mailing lists 


Upstate Ancestry

Provides some research links for the Upstate area.


South Carolina Genealogy: The Andrea Files

Leonardo Andrea was a professional genealogist who researched a number of SC families. This site does not contain links to the actual research files, but instead describes and classifies how his research was carried out. There are useful indices to family files and folders so that you can find out whether your family might have been among the families he researched.


ABP Abstracts

Dr. Bruce Pruitt has written up abstracts of land documents from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. I find these very useful in my research. This site has links to lists of these abstract books by state that contain purchasing information.


South Carolina in the Civil War

An excellent list of links.


War Between the States in South Carolina

Anderson County

Anderson County SC GenWeb

Like the Greenville GenWeb site, this is an active GenWeb site and is very helpful.


Anderson County Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society

Includes a clickable index to archived newsletters.


Anderson County, SC Book-of-the-Dead Tombstone Inscriptions

A digital version of Ross M. Smith’s project for transcribing all the known tombstones in Anderson County. Tombstones are cross-indexed by name and cemetery – extremely useful!


Anderson County Library’s South Carolina Room


Greenville County

Greenville County Library System

A fabulous resource, both online and onsite. One page that I find particularly useful:

Obituary index


Greenville County Historical Records

Posted on the Greenville County government website courtesy of the Greenville County Library, this is a definite “must” site for all Greenville researchers. Many of the microfilmed records of the county – estate records, indices of land records, etc. – are posted here. Not every microfilmed record is here, but there are enough to seriously cut down the amount of onsite research time you will need to spend (not that I consider research time in Greenville a hardship) and the indices, in combination with the Greenville Library’s online finding aids, are indispensable in planning out a research trip.


Greenville County South Carolina GenWeb

This is one of my favorite GenWeb sites. It is definitely worthwhile to check out each one of the links in the green column on the left. For instance, you might think “I have Ancestry (or Heritage Quest), so I don’t need to check out the census links.” But the links here have a number of heads of household who have been crossed-indexed from one census to the next on the early censuses, and also have neighboring families listed. An invaluable resource!


Greenville County Chapter of the SC Genealogical Society


Pendleton District

Pendleton District, SC – Part of the American Local History Network


Old Pendleton District Chapter of the SC Genealogical Society


Other Links in the Region


The Piedmont Historical Society, South Carolina


Going through bookmark files and pages is usually a rude awakening and this is no exception. Many of the URLs for pages I had bookmarked under Genealogy > South Carolina are no longer valid. A number of Pendleton District links and all of my Williamston links are gone. I can see that I’ll have to do some googling to rebuild these links.

Wordy Wednesday: The Gaffney Peachoid

Guilford Courthouse Battlefield was actually the end of our trip to Greenville, but I am featuring the Gaffney Peachoid as the final picture of the trip, because when you see it, you know you are near the border between North and South Carolina. The Peachoid is a 150-feet-tall water tower.

What you see are three imperfect pictures because I took them on our way out of South Carolina (= going north) instead going south, when you get a much better view of the Peach - a "rear-end" view, as it were (anyone who has ever seen it knows why, and also why it is also referred to as "The Moon Over Gaffney"). One thing you can see in these photos is the picturesque "road sign forest" surrounding the Peach, including a sign for the nearby Fatz Cafe.

Standing Springs Churchyard and the Site of the Old Moore Homestead

On the day we left Greenville, after I picked up one last microfilm document printout at the library, we headed for Standing Springs before heading back north. I knew that many members of the Bud Mathis Moore family are buried in the Standing Springs churchyard, as are many members of associated families such as Cox, Long, Baldwin, and others. Below are pictures of the present-day church and churchyard. Photos of individual tombstones from the churchyard will be appearing on my Graveyard Rabbit Afield blog.







The Furman Moore History of the Moore Family indicated that the original farm was near Log Shoals Bridge, and the land deed named Stony Creek (in some areas, such as where it meets W. Georgia Road near Standing Springs, it is called Rocky Creek). Using Standing Springs, Stony Creek, and Log Shoals Bridge (which has a road named after it) as reference points, I found N. Moore Road on Google Maps. I do not know exactly how far the farm extended in various directions, but I figured that the intersection of N. Moore Road and Stony Creek (Log Shoals Road is a bit to the north) was most likely part of the old farm. Below are the map, the intersection of N. Moore Road and Stony Creek, a couple of pictures of the area, and a couple of pictures of Stony Creek.