My Trails into the Past

image from Pixabay In October, Jan Joyce gave a webinar to the Writers SIG of the Association of Professional Genealogists, titled “Restarting Research: Writing Your Way Back after a Break.” I was finally able to view the recording this week. It was a great interactive webinar, and I’m sorry I missed it live. She had five tips: recall, review, prompt, write, and recap or restart, which she expanded on with the help of the audience. Recall was basic. Try to remember what the research goal or objective was. It’s a big picture approach to the original problem. We were to consider why we were working on it, and to try to remember any challenges we had, and if we remembered what our next steps were going to be. For my project, I want to find the parents of Benjamin W. Jones, born about 1822 in Virginia, who married Amanda A. Haley on 26 June 1845 in Rankin County, Mississippi. I know her parents, but not Benjamin’s. One of the challenges is that I have no idea where in Virginia he i...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings :  1)  Which of your ancestors lived a life of hardship or sadness?  Who had few possessions or resources, was involved in violence or war, lived through a famine, or suffered forced immigration?   Here's mine: I have a story from an interview with a great uncle, O.D. “Pig” Johnston. Yes, that’s his name and what he had been called since a toddler. The interview was conducted by Jewell Dukes Huddleston and published in two installments in the Comanche Chief in her column called “Wagon Wheels keep on turnin’” on 29 November 1979 and 6 December 1979. He was 81 at the time of the interview. Here is the transcript of what he said about his maternal grandmother, Amanda A. (Haley) Jones. “. . . a twice-told tale recalls the trials experienced by Johnston’s maternal gran...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment today from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to describe a common document or record that provided new and/or unique information to one or more of our ancestors. (Thanks to Linda Stufflebean for this topic.) Here's mine: My document shows well how keeping track of the neighbors on a census record can pay off. The document that gave me much information about my mother’s paternal side of the family is the 1880 U.S. federal census for Comanche County, Texas. I was looking for Rubin M. Johnston, my 2x-great-grandfather. Because of the large gap between the census years 1900 and 1880 due to the loss of the 1890 census, I was not sure if I would find him married or still with his parents. I found him with his wife, Olevia J., and three daughters I did not know. [1] There was a clue on the census that they had been married the previous year, so Olevia wa...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing : 1)  We all have "elusive ancestors" that we cannot find a name for, or one that absolutely eludes us, but we know some details about their spouse and/or children. 2)  Tell us about one of them - how are you related?  What do you know about them? Where did they live? etc. 3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post. Here’s mine: I do not know the parents of my 3x-great-grandfather, Benjamin W. Jones, who married Amanda A. Haley 26 Jun 1845 in Rankin County, Mississippi. [1] Census records in Rankin County show Benjamin was born in Virginia about 1822. [2] He first appeared in Rankin County in the 1845 state census and 1845 tax list. These show Benjamin as a sing...

This is my third year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Olevia Jane Jones, my fourth great-grandmother, was born 22 February 1859. [1] Her parents were Benjamin W. Jones and Amanda A. Haley. [2] She was the fifth and middle child of nine. There is no census that lists all of the children together. In 1860, she was the youngest of five. [3]   B.W. Jones, 38, male, farmer, VA, $2842, $8323   AA Jones, 31, F, MS    MF Jones, 13 F, MS   WA Jones, 11, male, MS   TW Jones, 9, male, MS   EB Jones, 5, F, MS   OJ Jones, 1, F, MS   David Gillman, 20, male, dressier, MS By 1870, her father is gone, having died sometime and someplace during the Civil War, and only eight children are enumerated, as the elde...

My fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Haley, died 26 January 1851 in Rankin County, Mississippi. At the time of his death, his son Thomas J. Haley stated his father died without a will, and that he had over two thousand acres of land and twelve slaves. [1] This post will discuss the distribution of the slaves, especially to Benjamin W. Jones and his wife, Amanda (Haley) Jones, my third great-grandfather. By publishing this information, descendants of these enslaved people might be able to make a connection and further their own research. These enslaved people were part of the Haley and Jones family and community, too. Distribution Those twelve slaves who were part of the estate were “a negro man Sam [,] a negro girl Sarah [,] a negro girl Charlotte [,] a negro boy Josephus [,] a negro girl Ally [,] a boy Sam [,] a boy Isaac [,] a boy Jordan [,] and one boy Moses and a girl Phillis and her child and a girl Celia .” [2] In the December term 1851, Thomas J. Haley report...