At the Cemetery - Isaiah Herndon

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 21  (May 24-30)
Prompt: At the Cemetery
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Cemeteries can be interesting places even if you aren't doing genealogy research and I like to drag others with me. Like the time we were on a motorcycle trip to Mena Arkansas, when I talked our entire group into back tracking 10 miles to the historical cemetery we passed that no one else had noticed.  There was a small area where we could all park and then traipsed down an overgrown faint trail to about 9 graves. The stones were  from the 1800s and very different from now.  Even the ones who weren't  fascinated by the stones, enjoyed the stop because it was so quiet and peaceful. We were not that far off the road, but it seemed like we had stepped back in time.

Now I'm working on another cemetery mystery.  Isaiah Herndon is my 3rd great grandfather.  His family has been hard to find since he died in the civil war with  4 young children.  My 2nd great grandfather may not have even been born yet when Isaiah died. His widow remarried and I have only recently been able to track her down to discover that she was married twice after Isaiah died. There are few records pertaining to Isaiah, a few land records, and a marriage certificate.  Even the civil war records that some attribute to him are probably someone else. The name on those records is I.H. Herndon, but he was from a different county.  When I did research in that county, I found an Isaac Herndon who is most likely the I.H. Herndon in the civil war records.  He is found in that county after the civil war so he returned and lived out his life there.

In the last half of the 18th century,  Silas Claiborne Turnbo traveled around the Ozarks interviewing members of the community. He interviewed Elisha Herndon who was the son of Isaiah and Sarah Daves Herndon.  Elisha stated that his father died near the end of the Civil War and was buried  in the McMahon Cemetery near  Seymore, Missouri.  Unfortunately, I cannot find that cemetery.  I believe now that the name was changed at some point. 

 Jennifer ______ had a picture of a tombstone for Isaiah on her ancestry tree.  The name and dates fit everything I know about my Isaiah.  However she didn't list a cemetery name, so I contacted her to find out where she found the tombstone.   A boy scout troop was cleaning an old overgrown cemetery on private land and sent the picture to her.  The scout leader didn't give much information about where it was located before she emailed the picture to her.  Jennifer did give me the scout's leader  name, but I have not been able to get in contact with her. So the mystery continues. Eventually I will track it down, but it may take a field trip to Missouri to do it.  

  Another story about a cemetery trip.

 

Cousin's Fishing Camp

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 20  (May 17-23)
Prompt: Cousin Bait
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Cousins and bait go hand in hand when you are an Evans. Ira Lee Evans’ children and his brother, Bill’s children have spent many hours together fishing. Some of their earliest memories include the old home place on the Sunflower river fishing for catfish. Even the grandchildren fished with Grandpa Ira off the dock. Once they were grown, Uncle Bill’s family bought a fishing camp together on a slough in the Delta wildlife area in Mississippi and Uncle Ira’s family were always welcome. There was always plenty of things to do and fun to be had. 

Fishing was just a part of going to the camp. Everyone fished and then gathered in the evenings for story telling and visiting. Then there were the fish frys. The cousins knew the secret way to prepare the fish which involved soaking them in milk to have the absolute best flavor.  There were big pots for deep fat frying the fish and the hush puppies. That was just one of the reasons that reunions were epic when the cousins got together. 

Asa “Smoky” Evans became an avid fisherman when she came to the states. When she fished, she spit on the worms because she was sure that it attracted the fish.  She was willing to sit in a boat all day fishing even when the fish weren’t biting, but most of the time she had the most fish at the end of the day.  

We always claim that everything is bigger in Texas but were willing to concede the biggest mosquitoes to Mississippi after one trip to the fishing camp. Bob took Grandpa (Uncle Son), Noah and Bo to the camp one year during the Summer break. Uncle Max took Noah with him to check the trot lines. They paddled the boat away from the camp at a leisurely pace. When the sun started to sink, they came paddling back as fast as they could from around the bend. They were doing their best to outrun the swarm of mosquitoes that surrounded them.  It was worth it though to watch the preteenagers, Bo and Noah, learn how to fillet fish. 

Over the years, the fishing camp flooded several times. Each of the cousin’s families built a cabin which were eventually raised on stilts. In the last flood the water was high enough to go halfway up the walls even though the cabins were high enough to walk under them.  But that hasn’t stopped the memories. 

  

 

My Mother: Gwonda Jane McCarley

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 19 (May 10-16)
Prompt: Mother's Day
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 Gwonda Jane McCarley married Leeland Golightley when she was 22 years old.  Two years later she had me and became a Mother.  Over the next 8 years, she became a mother 5 more times. Well, really 3 more times considering two of those times she had twins. Over the next years, she became a grandmother and a great grandmother. I want to celebrate her life in pictures.

 

#52Ancestors: Loss

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 12  (Mar 22-28)
Prompt: Loss
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It has been awhile since I posted anything. Life and work displaced genealogy for awhile.  Yesterday I presented a program at the TXGenWeb Virtual Seminar and the seminar has inspired me to take my time back and start writing again. I want to go back and write about all the prompts that I've missed so I'm going to add some empty posts to keep them in order.  I'm going to be patient with me as I get caught up and continue on. I hope you will be too.

The prompt for March 22-28th was Loss and I am feeling the loss right now of time spent in different ways.  I have been doing genealogy research for over 40 years off and on. In the beginning it was often only a couple of times a year when I had time to travel to the downtown library in Dallas or time to write a few letters to courthouses in far away places.  Now those places don't seem so far away when I can jump on the computer at 10 o'clock at night and search the street view of Google or find an index of courthouse records available or search one of the big database websites, like ancestry.com, familysearch.com, or the USGenWeb Project. 

While I'm feeling the loss of time over the last few months due to a reorganization at work and the knowledge that in the Fall I will no longer be working on the El Centro campus, I am thinking of the loss that our ancesters must have felt when they immigrated or moved from one place to another.  They didn't have email to keep in contact with friends and family that were left behind. Letters didn't take 3 or 4 days to arrive. Sometimes letters traveled months to reach their destination.  Even close family eventually lost contact.  Now we keep in contact with email, FaceBook, Tumbler, Instagram, and other social media. 

 One of the ways that I keep in contact and try to bridge the gap between the past and the present is with this blog. That may be one of the reasons that I feel a sense of loss for not posting over the last few months.  Perhaps I'll do better in the future, but either way I plan to be patient with myself. 

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
#52ancestors

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.