Fortune: Ira Lee Evans

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 10 (March 15-21)

Prompt: Fortune
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The American Heritage Dictionary has one definition of fortune as the turns of luck in the course of one's life. As I research our families, it is not uncommon to see that turn of luck.

Ira Lee Evans had a turn of luck during the great depression.  Before the great depression, he was a successful logging camp owner with several camps, mule teams and trucks which hauled logs to the sawmill near Sumner, Mississippi.  Below is a picture of some of the mule teams with a driver named "Cushfoot".  That was a nickname, but he was remembered with fondness by Ira's son, John.  John remembered him as being kind to him as a young boy who was probably in the way most of the time. 

By the time the depression was over, Ira had to sell the logging camps but there was little money left after paying his employees and bills. He moved his family to Holmes County where he worked as a logger again.  A turn of luck again and he was able to buy some land with a house and a store on it in Sharkey County.  It was a fun time as other family members lived near by and they worked and played together. After the hay bales were picked up from the railroad platform, they often had dances on the platform with adults and kids alike having fun.

They had not lived in Sharkey County too long when there was a big flood. The family loaded up in Uncle Bill’s old truck and headed for higher ground. For seven days they stayed in a train on a railroad siding before they could go back to the big house. The flood caused the next turn of luck as they lost everything in the house and started over with repairing the house.

In his later years, Mr. Ira began running a ferry across the Sunflower River not too far from Anguilla. There were no bridges near there for years. The ferry ran on cables across the river and his grandchildren remember going with him across the river as he transported cars across. It didn’t seem like work since he fished with them between cars.  After he retired, his grandson still operated the ferry when visiting because the new operator, Mr. Hall, lived just across the river and let him use the levers to move the ferry across the river. Between trips they still fished and built a 2 x 4 wired cage that rested in the river. When they caught a catfish, it would go in the cage, where Ira fed them with dog food. When it was time to eat, there was always fresh catfish to be had when the cage was pulled out of the river. 

A turn of luck, fortune, moved through out Mr. Ira’s life, changing his and his family’s life for bad and good.  Through out it all, he moved forward providing a stable rock for his family.

                                                     

Abraham McCarley

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 9 (March 8-14)

Prompt: Name's the Same
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You wouldn't think there would be too many men named Abraham McCarley.  However, in many cultures it is tradition to name the oldest son after the paternal grandfather and the second son after the maternal grandfather.  That can sometimes be a good clue in linking generations together. But if a man has 4 sons and all 4 sons name their oldest son after the grandfather, there could be as many as 5 men with the same name in the same area.

How do you separate out the men and decide  which facts go with which man?  I started with finding out who each man was married to and finding an approximate birth date.   Any stray facts that didn't belong to a known Abraham went into a different column in my Excel spreadsheet.  In the beginning, I had 7 different Abraham columns. Gradually by using a timeline, I was able to move facts from three of the columns to the other columns, narrowing my Abrahams down to just four.  All of them lived in the same general area, and moved to the next area. Sometimes their moves were as much as 5 or 6 years apart.  Sorting out the land records were easy when the wife was named with the husband, but some of the land records did not name the wife. Some of the owners of land were only determined when they died and I could see which son the land was passed to or if the wife was named in the will.

One record which I will probably never be able to assign to a particular Abraham is a newspaper article in Maury County, TN.  It states that Abraham McCarley took up a brown horse and was advertising for it's owner. In Maury County at that time, lived Abraham Sr. and his son, Abraham Jr. as well as Abraham, Sr's grandson, Abraham (son of Thomas T).  It probably wasn't the son of Thomas T as he was only about 13 at the time. But was it Abraham Sr or Abraham Jr.?

Any time I have trouble sorting out a genealogy problem, I resort to Excel.  If you haven't used it to solve a problem yet, I recommend it.

 

Twins and more Twins

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 9 (March 1-7)
Prompt: Multiples
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The myth is that twins come every other generation.  That is not true in my family.  It seems as if every generation has twins. My mother even had two sets of twins.

Going backwards from the youngest generation and their relationship to me: 

(Gen 1) Eryn Nissa & Kenneth Lee - Grandchildren 

Kenny & Eryn are 21 now
How time flys!

(Gen 2) Heather LeAnn & Chase Wayne- 1st cousins, once removed 

(Gen 3) Bobby Lee & Barbara Lynn - Brother & Sister 

(Gen 3) Bryan Keith & Brent Kevin - Brothers

(Gen 4 ) Sadie Fay & Vadie May - Aunts 

(Gen 5) Not in my line as there was only one child born in this generation, but maybe some of her cousins? 

(Gen 6) That brings us to the 6th generation.  The family story is that two brothers drowned in a tank (pond) when one brother tried to save the other.  There were some who thought that they were twins or at least very close in age as they were supposed to be in college at the time.  At this point, I have not been able to prove this story. I have found no indication of any twins for this generation in either the maternal or paternal line of generation 5. Nor have I found any proof of two brothers drowning. 

(Gen 9)  Going back in this line, there is a brother born on 1 Jan 1830 and his sister, born on 2 Jan 1830.  Is this a mistake?  or twins born hours apart?  This brother and sister are not in my direct line but siblings to my 3rd Great Grandfather, so this genealogy conundrum hasn't been a priority for me to solve. Maybe it should be.