My Trails into the Past

I have been working on preparing for a trip to Salt Lake City to research at the Family History Library. Six days of researching in the microfilm- and book-filled library is a wonderful and fulfilling experience. So I began to prepare by looking at the dead-end lines in my family tree, especially those on my mother’s side who lived in the South. My third great-grandparents fit that bill: Samuel Johnston and Elizabeth McCormack. Samuel Johnston was born about 1816 in South Carolina, based on age 34 in the 1850 census and age 44 in the 1860 census. [1] These are the only two census records I have found for Samuel. He did not appear on the 1870 census with his widowed wife and children. [2] It was difficult to find Samuel in the 1850 Yalobusha County, Mississippi census until I searched for some of his neighbors from the 1860 Yalobusha Co, MS census and found him near those same neighbors. I could see why he was difficult to find. His written surname looked like “Dehuson...