Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Which Ancestors Would You Like to Talk To?

It's Saturday Night -

time for more Genealogy Fun!

Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:

1)  We sometimes find we have questions we would love to discuss with our ancestors - the who, what, when, why and how questions that might help with our genealogy research.

2)  Which ancestors would you like to talk to?  What questions would you ask? 

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook.

First

I would like to speak to my 3x great-grandfather, Samuel Johnston. He was born 1816 somewhere in South Carolina and died sometime around 1869 in Titus County, Texas.

First off, Titus County, Texas’s courthouse burned in the 1890s, so any records he created there are gone. I’m lucky to have some tax records that had been sent to the state.

Prior to that, they lived in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, and can be found in the 1850 and 1860 census. Prior to 1850, they are in a black hole. The children were born in Alabama—somewhere. Sam and his wife, Elizabeth McCormack were born somewhere in South Carolina. They might have married there or maybe married in Alabama before having five children there, the youngest born about 1840.

None of their children give their place of birth in Alabama on any record. Isabella died before death certificates and if there had been, they would have burned in the 1895 fire. Next child, Reuben, died in 1924, but no certificate has been found for him. Luvina died before 1880, before certificates, as did Washington in 1883. Marion died in 1938 but his certificate only says he was born in Mississippi, though census records listed Alabama.

My questions to him would be:

• Where were your children born in Alabama?
• Where were you and your wife married?
• Where were you and your wife born?
• Who were your parents?

Second

The other person I would ask is my 2x great-grandfather, Jeremiah Sullivan. He was born around 1811 in County Cork, Ireland. He married Mary Sheehan sometime before 1843. They had 9 known children. I think they moved around a lot, probably doing mining jobs.

My questions to him would be similar to those posed to Samuel:

• When were you married?
• When and where were you and Mary born?
• What was the timeline of your life in Ireland?
• Where were your children born?
• Who were your parents? Who were Mary’s parents?

The ancestry for both of these lines stop with them. It makes the fan chart have large swaths of blanks. I would sure love to be able to go back further. Even clues would be helpful—I don’t mind working through research, but I need locations!

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