Treasure Chest Thursday: A Patchwork Quilt Made by Grandma Moore

Unfortunately I have not had time lately to do daily posts for Lisa Alzo’s series “Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month” at The Accidental Genealogist, but several of them have definitely inspired me, so I’ll try to do some of the prompts when I can (out of order, of course).

For Treasure Chest Thursday as well as for my series “Please Keep These Things,” I would like to do Prompt #6: “Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.) If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother or grandmother, or aunt (a scarf, a hat, cooking utensil, furniture, etc.)”

The heirloom I am featuring is one of four patchwork quilts made by my grandmother that I inherited from my mother. I regret to say that only three of these quilts survive. I took the smallest one with me to college. Careless idiot that I was, at some point in college I washed and dried it at a laundromat – end of quilt. Had something like that happened today, I would try to get a professional to repair it for me, but unfortunately this did not occur to me at the time and I compounded my idiocy by throwing the ragged quilt away.

This quilt is the only one that is being kept out for display at the present time. The other two have been put away in a chest for the time being. There are still too many people and cats in this house to safely display all three quilts.

Grandma Moore, my mother’s mother, was an extremely skilled seamstress. My mother inherited her talents; I did not. Some of the quilts Grandma passed down to her children included the names of her children and grandchildren embroidered on some of the patches, so there is double genealogy relevance!

Transcription Tuesday: More Adventures of Sheriff Henry Lewis

Here are three more articles featuring Sheriff William Henry Lewis:

The Killing at Wilmer

20 January 1887, Dallas Morning News

Sheriff Lewis and Deputy Sheriff Carson returned yesterday from Wilmer, to which point they were summoned on Tuesday to look after the slayer of Horace G. Revels. The facts of the killing as imparted by Mr. Lewis to a NEWS reporter, are as follows:

George Priest last Sunday night married a stepdaughter of Revels, who was violently opposed to the match, and, it is said, swore that he would kill the couple. On Tuesday George Priest, his half sister, Mollie Dagen, and his uncle, W. Slavens, drove by old man Revels’ house in a wagon. On observing Priest, Reve3ls rushed out of his house with a revolver and followed the wagon, threatening to kill Priest. Slavens, who was armed, as Revels gained on the wagon, drew his shotgun and fired, killing him on the spot. One of the witnesses testified at the inquest to having heard the deceased say that he was going to kill Slavens also. Revels was found in the road, his head resting in a pool of blood, and his face and breast lacerated with buckshot. After the shooting Slavens turned the lines over to his nephew and fled to the woods, and had not up to the late hour last night been arrested.

Mr. Priest was in the city yesterday and claimed that the shooting was in self defense. A chamber of the pistol carried by the deceased was found empty.

On a Serious Charge

21 May 1887, Dallas Morning News

B. F. Mills Arrested on the Charge of Forgery

Gen. Cabell received a telegram last evening from Sheriff H. P. Ware, of Gainesville, which read: “Arrest B. F. Mills, Forged three checks here. See Sanger Brothers. They or the sheriff know him.” The telegram was turned over to Sheriff Lewis, who started out to find Mills. To get a clew was difficult, as neither the sheriff nor the Sangers knew anything about Mills. Sheriff Lewis learned, however, that a party from Gainesville had been seen in the city with his nose skinned and bearing other evidences of riotous living. Later on the sheriff dropped into Purdy & Randall’s to get supper, and while there observed a drunken man with a skinned nose engaged in conversation with another party. The sheriff shadowed the drunken man until they found themselves face to face in a street car. He there and then told him that his name was Ben F. Mills, and that he knew it to be so. Mills owned up and was taken into custody. After his arrest he said he knew what the trouble was about, but felt that he was going to come out of it with colors flying. The arrest was made within three hours after the receipt of the telegram.

Christmas Remembrances

27 December 1890

Hospital Patients and County Prisoners Receive Good Dinners and Presents

On Christmas day Steward Sanford of the city hospital tendered an elegant dinner to the hospital patients at his own expense which they highly enjoyed. Mr. P. P. Martinez remembered them by presenting each of the twenty-eight inmates with some cigars and tobacco and a silver dollar. Mr. C. H. Williams sent a pig and a turkey, and Mrs. W. G. Currie sent each patient a silk handkerchief and other things.

The prisoners at the county jail were given a Christmas dinner by Sheriff Lewis and Jailers Rhodes and Tanner. They also received such presents as cakes, fruits, tobacco and cigars, pocket change and other things from Mr. and Mrs. B. Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, Capt. J. C. Arnold and Mr. P. P. Martinez. For these things they request that THE NEWS to extent their thanks.

Memory Monday: The Need for Speed

The physical thrill I experienced as a child from the sensation of speed certainly did not originate in any form of physical courage. I do not like the sensation of heights, or rather, the view downward that reveals the solid earth far, far below me. I never had to be told not to play with matches; the possibility of getting burned was enough to ward me off matches until my teen years.

But going fast was different. I was always a passenger – a passive participant – in these escapades, so I did not technically engage in speeding, but I certainly encouraged it.

My earliest memory of the thrill of high speed was a Sunday morning when my older brother Don had been assigned to drive me to Sunday School. My father did not attend church, and my mother attended only occasionally, but she felt that I should get some exposure to Sunday School. Most of our older cars up to this point had been wheezy, unreliable old heaps, but the Edsel was the first new car my family had ever purchased. And the speedometer went up to 120.

“Let’s do 100,” said my brother with a grin. My five-old-brain could not do the time/distance/speed thing, but I like the idea of such a big number. I could only grin and nod in agreement.

The Edsel could not accelerate very fast, but I guess it got to 100 by the end of the block we were on. It felt fast. I don’t remember anything that happened at Sunday School that day. Mrs. Mohring and my friend Leslie probably wondered why I was so quiet and could not stop grinning.

The grin probably did not disappear when I got home, which aroused Mom’s curiosity.

“What have you been up to?”

“Nothing.” Grinning. I was actually dying to tell her, because I was proud of how daring Don and I had been, but I knew I had to keep quiet. Don had bestowed a great privilege on me and had treated me like a grown-up (I thought) by entrusting me with a secret. Mom tried several more times, but for once I was able to keep from spilling the beans. Supper was a challenge; every time Don’s eyes and mine met, we had to quickly look down at our plates to keep from betraying our amusement.

My next big experience with speed was on my Uncle Bill’s motorcycle. He let me ride behind him on the condition that I hold on tight. I held on for dear life. I could barely keep my eyes open to see the world as it passed us by, the wind stung my eyes so. But I could feel that wind whipping my hair until it stood out from my head like Medusa’s snakes, and it felt glorious. Besides, 70 or so on a motorcycle was equivalent to 100 in an Edsel, sensation-wise.

Uncle Bill could hardly talk when we stopped and he took me off the motorcycle, he was laughing so hard. “Boy, ain’t you a sight,” he wheezed. “I bet you never gone so fast in your life.” I didn’t mention the 100 mph adventure with my brother, out of consideration both for my brother’s trust and for my Uncle Bill’s pride at having shown me what “fast” is.

Mom had to spend extra time trying to get the tangles out of my hair that night.

While my introduction to that high-speed thrill at the hands of male relatives had been done covertly, there were acceptable ways to continue to enjoy it with my mother’s blessing. Well, perhaps blessing is too strong a word; she didn’t object.

The proper vehicle was any of the roller coaster rides at carnivals and amusement parks. I loved roller coasters with a love that was hard to contain, and never really wanted to ride any other ride or enjoy any other amusement. Disneyland was a mixed blessing; there were only 4 D tickets (it was the D ticket, wasn’t it?); the rest of my time had to be wasted using up the other useless tickets.

Nothing else ever really approached the keen enjoyment of that thrill. Occasionally, on a family trip in the Edsel, we might approach a respectable speed with my father at the wheel. We always used to joke that he knew two speeds: 70 mph and stop. My mother’s watchful presence usually held Daddy’s speeding instincts in check, but we did go pretty fast on the open highways. In a car with no air conditioning during hot summer days in Southern California, the natural reaction of dogs and children is to face the wind to relieve the heat as much as possible. And that is what our poodle Pierre and I did, his black moptop head sticking out the front right side and my (then) red head sticking out behind him from the back seat. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend the car was going 100 miles per hour.

The motorcycle, with two of its admirers

See also:

Memory Monday: Our Edsel
Billy Jack Brinlee, 1934-2010

Timeline Portrait of Lizzie Smith: Stitching the Gaps Together

Lizzie with husband Hiram Brinlee, Jr. and sons Odell and Austin ca 1918 (courtesy of Edna S.)

Up until the time when Lizzie Smith Bonner married my great-grandfather Hiram Carroll Brinlee, Jr., every single bit of information about her – every single date – is a guess and an estimate.

It starts with her birth. If you go to the entry for her tombstone at Findagrave, you will see that the date given in the transcription section is April 4, 1860, whereas if you look at her tombstone, the year of her birth is given as 1856.

I don’t believe either one. The first date comes from her obituary and the second may have appeared in a family Bible. The age given on her marriage license and the age indicated on the earliest census on which I have been able to find her (1910) contradict these dates and indicate something closer to 1868 or 1869; the 1920 census age is consistent with this. And the birth of her youngest child Cecil Odell in 1908 makes those early dates a real stretch.

Lizzie’s age starts creeping up on her Application for a Confederate Widow’s Pension and continues through the 1930 census to her death in 1958. The Findagrave entry gives Knoxville as the place of Lizzie’s birth; I would love for that information to be accurate, so that I would at least have a starting point for my research, but I don’t know whether or not I can trust that piece of data, either.

As indicated by the note shown below, Lizzie was probably not trying to inflate her age for the pension application but had genuinely forgotten how old she was:


“leonard tex sep 10th, 1929
dear sir i will wright to yu in regard to my pension i have lost my corect age i am some where in 60 i am not 75 if you can help me any way i shure wood be glad i have no help a tall.
yore friend
susan E. Brinlee”

This uncertainty and confusion continues throughout her early life. You can see how often I have mulled this information over and run through the various permutations in two of my previous articles on Susan Elizabeth Smith “Lizzie” Bonner Brinlee: Lizzie Smith Timeline, which I will reproduce below for reference in this article, and Brickwall Workshops by the Fairfax Genealogical Society, which was a reproduction of the write-up I submitted to the brickwall workshop panel.

Based on a total of 24 Smith-tagged articles, you would think that I have covered Lizzie thoroughly enough; time to drop it for a while! But I will never feel I have done enough and I cannot drop it.

There are several bits of information about Lizzie that help keep this obsession alive. One is the date of her death: July 29, 1958. I was a little girl then. She was still alive when I was born – the only one of my great-grandparents who was – and yet she is the only brickwall great-grandparent.

The second piece of information that haunts me is this item, hidden among some online genealogies as a Post-It note submitted by a second cousin based on information she had heard from her grandmother (Cecil Odell Brinlee’s wife): Lizzie “was from Tennessee and had lived with a family that had taken her in to help work, where she washed dishes by standing on a bucket. Therefore, she had to have been fairly young.” This reveals an additional mystery for Lizzie: Why was she working out as a young child? Was she an orphan or a child of a very poor family?

The third item is merely a family rumor – that Lizzie was part Native American. It’s one item of family lore that I have always cherished and fervently hoped was true. But the genealogical myth-buster in me triumphed and after checking out the Dawes and Guion Miller Rolls with no success, I abandoned that avenue of research. However, at the Brick Wall Workshop sponsored by the Fairfax Genealogical Society that I attended, the first response I got was: What is she doing in Indian Territory in 1891? And especially with a name like Smith? Check those Rolls! So even though I had no success in finding her the first time around, there is a legitimate reason to suspect some Native American connection.

The timeline work for Lizzie has been particularly useful in following a possible lead on her first marriage (“to a Mr. Bonner” according to family researchers, probably based on her name as “Mrs. S. L. Bonner” on the marriage license with Hiram Brinlee). If she was born in 1868-69 and married at age 17 as indicated by the 1930 census, this would give a year of 1885-86 for her first marriage, and there is an 1886 Tennessee marriage record for a Lizzie Smith and a W. T. Banner (I have found no Banner families but did find Bonner families at the location given).

Some time between those years and Lizzie’s marriage to Hiram Brinlee, Mr. Bonner died. And Lizzie ended up in Indian Territory. Were the Bonners Sooners, or did her presence have something to do with Lizzie’s (possible) Native American background?

Between the first “known” date on the timeline, the date of Lizzie’s marriage to Hiram Brinlee, and her death in 1958, all the information falls into three categories: the births of her children, census information, and information provided on her pension application.

And between the birth of daughter Cordelia in 1895 and the birth of son Austin in 1904, there is a gaping hole right where the 1900 census should be. Oh, I have located where the family was, then – Britton Township in Oklahoma Territory – because Hiram, son Louis from his first marriage, and a hired hand are shown living there. But I can’t find Lizzie and the children anywhere else and I suspect they were actually living there, too. So my best hope for nice, juicy information on Lizzie’s month and year of birth is dashed. And one of the most tantalizing things is that, according to the 1910 census, Lizzie had had a total of seven children, of whom only four were living in 1910. Might one or two of those children have been alive in 1900 and have appeared on this census?

The gap in the early years, when Lizzie probably spent time working for another family, and the gap during which she probably gave birth to the children who died, haunt me the most. Why did her maiden name have to be Smith? Why didn’t she appear on the 1900 census? Why couldn’t someone have asked her more questions about her past when she was still alive? I am still trying to stitch those gaps together.


Lizzie with sons Odell, Austin, and Lawrence, sometime in the 1930s? (Courtesy of George B.)

Timeline

4 April 1868: Birth of Susan Elizabeth “Lizzie” Smith in Tennessee (state from US Federal Censuses 1910, 1920, 1930 and Susan E. Brinlee’s Widow’s Application for Confederate Pension, day and month by hearsay from family Bible, now believed to have been burned, and year based on age reported on marriage license of H. C. Brinlee and Mrs. S. L. Bonner).

1885/1886: According to the 1930 census, Lizzie first married at the age of 17; I would guess this happened in Tennessee. [According to Tennessee marriage records, a W. T. Banner married a Lizzie Smith in October 1886 in McMinn County, Tennessee.]

3 December 1891: Lizzie marries Hiram Carroll Brinlee, Jr., in White Bead Hill, Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma.

29 January 1893: Son Lawrence Carroll Brinlee born in String Town, Atoka, Oklahoma (Paul’s Valley is given as his place of birth on his WWI Draft Registration Card).

8 June 1895: Daughter Cordelia Lee “Cordie” Brinlee born in Oklahoma.

25 June 1900: Hiram appears on the 1900 US Federal Census for Britton Township, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Territory; Lizzie and the children may be living with him.

1902: The year Hiram and Lizzie may have moved from Oklahoma to Texas, as reported by Lizzie on her Confederate Widow’s Pension Application.

6 April 1904: Son Austin Franklin Brinlee born in Farmersville, Collin County, Texas.

23 September 1908: Son Cecil Odell Brinlee born in Collin County, Texas.

4 May 1910: Hiram and Lizzie appear on the US Federal Census for Justice Precinct 2, Hunt County, Texas.

22 August 1913: Hiram Brinlee files Confederate Soldier’s Application for a Pension in Grayson County, Texas.

30 January 1920: Hiram and Lizzie appear on the US Federal Census for Farris, Atoka Co., Oklahoma. Hiram had died on 20 January, but the census-taker must have been following the instructions, which indicated that “individuals alive on 1 January but deceased when the enumerator arrived were to be counted.”

27 July 1925: Lizzie files her Confederate Widow’s Pension application from Collin County, Texas.

10 Sep 1929: Lizzie writes a letter requesting assistance with her Pension application; the location is given as Leonard, Texas (Leonard is in Fannin County).

21 April 1930: Lizzie appears on the US Federal Census living with her son Austin in Fannin County, Texas.

9 April 1953: Lizzie’s son Lawrence Brinlee dies.

29 July 1958: Lizzie dies in Plano, Collin County, Texas. She apparently had lived for some years with her youngest son, Cecil Odell, who signed the application for her mortuary warrant and her death certificate. Her death certificate indicates her stay in Plano as “several years.”

Sources

- Marriage License of H. C. Brinlee and Mrs. S. L. Bonner, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, 1 December 1891. Photocopy.

- Certificate of Marriage of H. C. Brinlee and Mrs. S. L. Bonner, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, 3 December 1891. Photocopy.

- Widow’s Application for a Confederate Pension No. 41103 for Susan Elizabeth Brinlee, Collin County, State of Texas, 27 July 1925.

- World War I Draft Registration Card of Lawrence Carroll Brinlee. Registration Location: Fannin County, Texas. Roll 1953353. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

- Certificate of Death of Lawrence Carroll Brinlee, 11 April 1953, State of Texas, State File No. 24235. Digital image accessed via Family Search Record Search.

- Certificate of Death of Cordie Lee Clinton, 25 May 1961, State of Texas, State File No. 26177. Digital image accessed via Family Search Record Search.

- Certificate of Death of Austin Franklin Brinlee, 17 November 1976, State of Texas, State File No. 82039. Digital imaged accessed via Family Search Record Search.

- Application for Social Security Account Number of Cecil Odell Brinlee, 454-26-3341, 6 January 1940. Photocopy.

- Hiram C. Brinlee household, 1900 US Federal Census, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Territory, population schedule, Britton Township, dwelling 191, family 191, Roll T623_1340, Page 10B, Enumeration District 158. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

- Harm [Hiram] C. Brinlee household, 1910 US Federal Census, Hunt County, Texas, population schedule, Justice Precinct Two, dwelling 283, family 288, Roll T624-1566, Page 19B, Enumeration District 119. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

- Hiram C. Brinlee household, 1920 US Federal Census, Atoka County, Oklahoma, population schedule, Farris Township, dwelling 295, family 297, Roll T625-1452, Page 15B, Enumeration District 7. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

- Austin F. Brinlee household, 1930 US Federal Census, Fannin County, Texas, population schedule, Precinct 3, dwelling 295, family 302, Roll 2331, Page 14B, Enumeration District 18. Accessed via Ancestry.com.



The above is submitted for the 91st Carnival of Genealogy, “A Tribute to Women!” March is women's history month and a great time to honor the women on our family trees. This is will be the 4th annual edition on this topic so we're going to change it up just a bit to keep it fresh... Write a biography about a woman on your family tree starting with a timeline of their life. Thank you to Jasia at Creative Gene for hosting and to footnoteMaven for the beautiful poster.

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.]

Family and Friends Newsletter Friday 5 March 2010

Research

Gradually getting back into my research routine after Olympics, GeneaBloggers games, and being away for a few days.

Smith

Had a “duh!” moment during the GeneaBloggers Games. I have been wanting to make a “pushpin map” of Tennessee for my Lizzie Smith project. The map would show the county lines and the pushpins would represent known 1870 residences of the families that are viable candidates to be Lizzie’s family. Since Knox and McMinn counties are of particular interest, I wanted to get an idea of which families are closest to those areas. My original idea was to create or locate a good paper map and use real pushpins. But during the GeneaBloggers Games it occurred to me – duh! – why not use the My Maps feature on Google Maps?

Blogs

Added 6 March: Ack! I see that I left out a post that I definitely intended to highlight: "The Walk Home" at Donna Pointkowski's What's Past Is Prologue. Donna illustrates an important part of capturing memories: it is not just individual events, but also rituals and routines that are important. And her description of the sights, sounds, and smells of that walk is very evocative. I'll have to use that prompt!

Bart at Stardust ‘n’ Roots has a great idea about where to display awards (in his case, he put his GeneaBloggers Games medals there): a virtual Fireplace Mantle, aka a separate page on his blog. Think I’ll steal the idea.

Kathleen Brandt at a3Genealogy talks about citation generators in “Evidence Explained Missing.” Gotta get me one of those.

Jasia at Creative Gene has a fascinating (and oh-so-true) article on genealogy as therapy.

And finally, why am I getting the feed from some blog to do with Audi? It appears to have hijacked the defunct (I think) Graveyard Rabbit of Covered Bridges blog. Sploggers, blog hijacking (there is even a blog devoted to busting those guys that I discovered when I was trying to find out why my Comment Button didn’t work), spam comments – just sick of them all!

Transcription Tuesday: Letter from A. C. Thurman, a Representative of the Black Community of Dallas, to Sheriff William Henry Lewis

Below are the scanned images and transcript of a letter, dated May 26, 1892, from A. C. Thurman, a representative of the Black community of Dallas, to Sheriff William Henry Lewis.

Context of the letter:

The letter was written in response to Sheriff Lewis’ actions in preventing the attempted lynching of an African-American man named Henry Miller. The information I have on this case comes from two main sources. One is my copy of an article written in tribute to Henry Lewis by Jack Hornady, husband of one of the children Henry and his wife Julia helped to raise after the children’s mother, Julia’s good friend Bettie Curtice Rosser, died. The other source consists of several newspaper articles, some transcribed at Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives and others downloaded from the archives of the Dallas Morning News.

In 1892 Henry Miller was being held for the murder of Police Officer O. C. Brewer when a large mob, estimated at 2,500, attempted to seize and lynch Miller. According to Jack Hornady’s article, Dallas Times-Herald publisher Edwin J. Keist told the story of “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.”

This is the event to which Mr. A. C. Thurman was referring in his letter.

Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives also contains a reference to A. C. Thurman on a page of transcripts of newspaper articles on African-Americans in Dallas. There are also several other articles on the Henry Miller case that can be located by going to the Dallas Archives page and searching for “Henry Miller.”




United States Post Office,

Dallas
Dallas County
State of Texas
May 26, 1892

Mr. Henry Lewis (Sheriff)

Sir your actions in the preventing the collard man Henry Miller the murderer of Policeman Brewer from being takend from Jail and hanged at the hands of an infuriated mob certainly meets the approval of all colared citizens of Dallas.

Not because the colared people desire for him to escape punishment but mainly because it is claimed, especially by men at the north that colored men here are mobbed without trial and the officers and the leading white citizens all in favor of mob law. Dallas put herself on record Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans all have alike let mobs disgrace their good names.

Allow me again to congratulate you and all the better element of our white citizens for the suppression of the mob.

Dallas should feel proud of so noble such an officer.

I am very Sincere

A.C. Thurman
a colard man

New Black History Page

You may have noticed that I have added a new page to this blog: Black History. Luckie at Our Georgia Roots has challenged researchers, particularly those with Southern roots, to take the opportunity of researching slaveholder ancestors to unearth information on the slaves of these ancestors and share it, including putting it online. A number of subsequent discussions and responses have been prompted by the initial discussion on Our Georgia Roots. Several online sites, including Afrigeneas, have been suggested as appropriate recipients of the information.

I am a “relative-but-not-total-newbie” to genealogy, having started about four and a half years ago. I spent most of my first year in genealogy getting a general idea of what was known about my family lines and also made a few discoveries of my own. In the second year, I started to research each level going backward in time and entering that information in my genealogy program, and am currently entering information on all my known great-great grandparents. This is not yet in-depth research, but it helps to clarify which families I wish to investigate more closely. Much of the “low-hanging fruit” for families with less common names has already been picked, so a lot of what I plan to do is to work on brick-wall ancestor with surnames such as Smith and Moore.

Luckie’s challenge therefore provides me with an opportunity to tackle some other types of interesting challenges, and for that I am grateful. This is something that I hope will eventually be of use to other researchers, but it also has the potential to provide a fruitful new direction in my own research.

At the great-great-grandparent level, there are two families on which I intend to focus, the Brinlees and the Floyds. From the Slave Schedules to the U.S. Federal Census, I know that my great-great grandfather Hiram Brinlee Sr. owned slaves. Since the schedules provide only the gender and age, ascertaining their identities is probably going to require a good bit of ingenuity. I will need to learn what additional records I need to look for that could provide this information.

The other ancestor of interest in this area is my great-great-grandfather George Floyd. I have not been able to find any mention of him on the Slave Schedules, but there are family stories indicating that he was indeed a slaveholder. In addition, the 1870 census shows a Black family by the name of Floyd living nearby.

I will be posting about what I know and what I am able to find on the slaves of these families in the coming weeks and months.

Although I am aware that the most critical area to cover would be slave records, I would like to extend the scope of the information I post to include post-Civil War information to which I have access, hence the page name of “Black History.” Some of the information, such as that contained in old newspaper articles, can be found online – most of them I obtained through a paid subscription to a particular newspaper’s archives – but since I am going to transcribe these articles and use them anyway I can make the information immediately accessible. And there is at least one item that is not publicly accessible to my knowledge. It is a letter from A. C. Thurman, representing the Black community of Dallas, to Sheriff William Henry Lewis (my great-great uncle). My copy of this letter is a photocopy, but I do not know whether the original still exists and am not aware of any repository being in possession of it. This letter and a bit of background will be the subject of my next Transcription Tuesday post.

I am sure as my research pushes back through previous generations I will encounter more slaveholding ancestors, and I resolve to share whatever I can find out about those slave families as well.

The relevant posts will bear the “Black History” label and so can be accessed under the labels at the bottom of this page; the general index will be on the “Black History” page (the link is at the top of this page). One existing article has already been indexed: Tinner Hill: Desegregation, Graveyards, and My Fireplace. More articles to come.