My Trails into the Past

Once the research expands back into the census with tick marks and only the head of household listed, it becomes more difficult. I have a family who were living in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, in 1850. The head of household and his wife were born in South Carolina. The children were born in Alabama, with the youngest at 1 years listed as born in Alabama, suggesting they came recently to Mississippi. Common Surname Their name is common: Johnston, which often is rendered as Johnson. I must look at people with both spellings. His first name was Sam or Samuel. I have found 14 men with the first name of Sam, Samuel, or S Johnson/Johnston in the 1840 Alabama census. Three households have a man in the right age group: Samuel Johnston, Talladega Co. Samuel Johnston, Benton Co. S. Johnson, Lauderdale Co. Of course, it is also possible that they moved to Alabama after the 1840 census enumeration was conducted and were still in South Carolina, or were in the act of traveling to Alabam...

This is my second 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. I have been working on this brick wall for many years. A blog post from 23 January 2014, sums up what I knew about the family. Since that post, I’ve collected tax and land records for Samuel in Yalobusha County, Mississippi. By figuring out who his neighbors were, I might discover where he was previously before Mississippi. His children were born in Alabama, but I have no idea yet which county. Here is the land mapped out for Samuel and his neighbors. He purchased his piece of land from Isaac Pearson/Person on 31 March 1856. [1] In the 1854 tax list, his neighbors were listed using the description of their land. [2] So what I’m doing now is creating a neighborhood to find families to resea...