Madness Monday - Photobucket

I've not blogged in awhile. While I've been away, there have been some changes that occurred at Photobucket that affected my blog and many others.

In case you haven't heard, Photobucket, where I've stored pictures for years, has decided to start charging for posting pics to third party sites, which includes blogs.

While this change happened a few months ago, I'm just now finding the time to discuss it.

When Photobucket decided to make this change, they 1) gave no warning that they were making the change and 2) made it retroactive. What this meant for those of us who used Photobucket is that the links to the pictures in our blogs were suddenly turned off.

Instead of the picture that you included when you did your post, you now get this.

In order to be able to turn your past photos back on and to be able to post in the future, Photobucket is now charging $33.33 / month or $399.96 per year. Sorry Photobucket but that's not happening.

So, I've been researching trying to find the best way to revive my blog to include the currently lost pictures. By the way, the pictures are still on Photobucket, they just don't show up on my blog.

I know with blogger, I can just have the pictures stored here with Google but am wondering if there are other options.

So I have a question for my fellow bloggers, how do you store the pictures that you use on your blog?

Madness Monday - Revisiting the Sharps and the Durdens

Hey everybody, this is actually a brand new post, as opposed to a previously posted post.

I actually did a little research this weekend. Yay for me!

When I first returned to my research, way back in 2009, I was hoping that by tracing some of my grandmother's cousins, I could crack the case of my mysterious great grandmother, also know as Fannie of the many names.

Two of those cousins that I was trying to trace were Pvt. Wheeler Sharp and Willie Claude Durden. I wrote about Pvt. Wheeler "Bubba" Sharp here and here and I wrote about the Durdens here.

My last activity on Bubba was to contact the funeral home that provided the services for his son, Avie, who died in November of 2010. 2 of Avie's siblings were still living and my hope was that my letter and info to the funeral home would be forwarded to them. I waited and waited and waited for a response but never received one.

I eventually forgot about both Bubba and Claude until this past week, when I received an email from Shelly, who informed me that her boyfriend was Bubba's great grandson and that she had come across documentation that listed Bubba's mother as Cora Durden.

I wrote her back and told her what I had on Pvt. Sharp and that his SS-5 application showed Cora Wheeler as his mother but I remembered that cousin Claude Durden's mother was named Cora, too. I also pointed out that for a brief period the two family's lived next door to each other. I also mentioned, that although Cousin Claude's SS-5 application stated that his mother was Cora Clemmons, my gut was telling me that these 3 Coras were all one in the same.

Glad I listened to my gut. It took me awhile to confirm what my gut was telling me, and even though the transcription was in error, there it was, the marriage of Warren Durden and Cora Sharp. (Cora's name had been transcribed as Cova)

So, Pvt. Wheeler was Cousin Claude's older brother, which explains the two families living next door to each other after they migrated from Walton County, GA to my home county (Cleveland) in NC. So from what I've been able to gather so far. Cora and Wheeler's Father, Ive, probably married sometime around 1890. by the 1900 census Cora was a widow with 4 children, one of which was "Bubba". She married Warren Durden in 1904 and had 2 more children, one of which was Willie Claude.

Since both of these men were related to my grandmother, I immediately assumed (rightly or wrongly) that more than likely the connection to my grandmother was on their mother's line. Unfortunately for me, just as quick as I had that bit of success in putting the brothers together, the door shut right back.

I had always wondered what happened to Cora after Warren Durden died in 1932. I've searched every record I could think of in NC and it was like she went pouf. No death certificates,  no marriages, nothing. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier but it appears that Cora may have actually gone back home to GA, as I found a death certificate for a Cora Durden in Walton County, GA that appears to be my Cora. Unfortunately, the informant did not know her parents names. What's with all these mysterious women on my grandmother's side of the family.

Of course, there could also be the possibility that the men are related on their father's lines but for now, I'll just concentrate on Cora.

........
Sources

1. Ancesrty.com. Georgia, Marriage Records From Select Counties, 1828-1978 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
2. "Georgia Deaths, 1928-1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QJX9-H2MY : 4 April 2016), Cora Lee Durden, 24 Mar 1938; citing Good Hope, Walton, Georgia, United States, Georgia Archives, Morrow; FHL microfilm .

Madness Monday - Grand Uncle Found

Are the ancestors getting restless, again?

Seems like I'm I'm having a few mini success without even trying. The mini successes are kind of all over the place though. First there was the discovery of new cousins on the paternal side of my family, which you can read about on Conversations with my Ancestors. Then thanks to my Cousin Irene (2nd cousin once removed) doing DNA testing with 23andme, I was finally able to confirm Grand Aunt Mattie was my Great Grandmother Fannie's daughter.

But for now, this one has to be the most special because it had nearly become an obsession with me to determine what happened to 2 of my grandmother's brothers, primarily her brother Willie Felton.

I've written about my Grand Uncle plenty of times during the life of this blog with my most recent post being on May 17, 2010.

I knew that one of the last contacts my grandmother's line of the tree had with Uncle Felton was in the early 1930s when he came to NC to visit his big sister and her family. Whenever I asked my mother about her uncle, trying to jog her memory based on the one and only time she met her uncle, she would always say that she thought he lived in DC and that he had traveled to NC with his and grandmom's younger brother Roy "JD." Try as I might I was never able to gather any additional information on Uncle Felton. Well, that is until today.

I actually had a few minutes to do a little blog reading today and thanks to my friend Valerie's, Begin With Craft, post about a new database on Ancestry.com, I finally have a date of death and place of interment for my Grand Uncle. The new database is
U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962. 


I immediately did a search for Uncle Felton, not really expecting to find anything when low and behold, I came across this.

I knew right away this was Uncle Felton, but just to be sure, I double checked the military info that was contained on his World War I Summary Card.

The Army Serial Number is the same on both documents; therefore, I'm confident that the Willie F. Pierce interred in grave number 1665 in the Colored Enlistment section of Arlington National Cemetery is my Grand Uncle Willie Felton Pierce.

There are still many questions that remain with regard to my Grand Uncle such as given the fact that it appears he probably was in the  DC area, just as my mother remembered. His younger brother, JD, and his baby sister, Ossie, and her family were also living in the DC area at the time of Uncle Felton's death. So, why is it no one had a clue or seemed to have a clue of what happened to Uncle Felton. The control form indicates that the form for his tombstone was mailed but who was it mailed to? Did he marry again? Did he die all alone? Did he have any children? What was he doing between the early 1930's until his death in 1946? Just like a genealogist, solve a mystery only to open up a new round of questions that need answers.

I also discovered Uncle Felton has a memorial on Find-a-Grave. I actually think I've come across his memorial on several occasions but never knew that it was my Grand Uncle's. Of course, I put in a request for a photo of his tombstone, although I've no clue if one is actually there or not. And of course, next year when the family reunion will be hosted by the DC branch of the family, I plan to make a trip over to Arlington, to grave #1665 and pay my respects to Uncle Felton. RIP Uncle Felton, you may be gone but you were never forgotten by this Grand Niece whom you never met.

Madness Monday - One More Clue in the Search for a Great Grandmother

Actually clue is probably not the right term. It was more of a confirmation of my research.

My Great Grandmother, Fannie "Of the Many Names," is one of the main reasons I begin this journey way back when. In fact she's the reason that most of the relatives on my maternal grandmother's side of my family want to begin searching.

I've not talked or researched Grandma Fannie for quite a while. I was having success on other lines and frankly, I had run out of ideas with regard to Grandma Fannie. But since hitting the proverbial 1870 brick wall on my other lines and not having much success breaking through those walls, it's only natural that Grandma Fannie would start calling out to me, again.

So, what the clue that dropped into my lap. Well, if you remember back in 2009, when I first started blogging about my research, I unearthed a new cousin, whom mom and I affectionately call Little Irene, to distinguish her from her Grandmother (mom's first cousin), who was also Irene. Irene's great grandmother, Mattie Lou Henyard Martin was my grandmother's older half sister. Based on the 1900 and 1910 censuses, Mattie never lived in the house with my great grandparents, my grandmother and the rest of her siblings. However, both censuses indicated that my great grandmother had other children that were still living. Therefore, even though my Great Grandfather had been previously married, I concluded that Mattie was my Great Grandmother's child. To date, I've not been able to document my Great Grandmother prior to 1900 and Aunt Mattie, who was born abt 1885 and died 10 Oct 1918 has been even harder. So, my only hope bringing some type of confirmation to the theory of Mattie's parentage was DNA. While I had asked Cousin Irene, early on about doing DNA, it wasn't until this year that she was finally able to do it thanks to 23andme's  Roots to the Future program, which was aimed at getting more African Americans into their database.

When Little Irene's results came in I was ecstatic!

Her mtDNA was L3e1a3. Strange as this may sound, since beginning DNA testing, the only other folks that I've come across with this assignment are known relatives, my mother and my cousin Nicholas who descends from my grandmother's baby sister, Ossie. So based on research, and a recently rediscovered letter from Cousin Ovella, Little Irene's Grand Aunt, to my mother, it appears that the DNA backs up the research.

The second part of the testing with 23and me is the Relative Finder, which shows mom and Little Irene share 1.50%, 8 segments.

Even better, in less than a month, I will finally meet Little Irene. She plans to bring her Grand Aunt Evelyn's photo album. I'm hoping that between the two of us we can finally crack the case of our mysterious Grandma Fannie.

And yes, I'm officially back on the hunt, for the time being, for Miss Fannie "What's Her Name," also know as Fannie "Of the Many Names," aka my great grandmother.

Madness Monday

Revisiting Ancestral Neighborhoods, Cluster Research, and Continuing the Hunt for a Slave Owner

Back in 2010,  I wrote about why I thought Jesse Pierce was the last slave owner of my 2^nd great grandparents, Jasper and Jane Pierce (Part I, Part II). All I needed was the documentation / evidence to support my hypothesis.

In trying to regroup and revise my strategy for determining the last slave owner of my Pierce ancestors, one the first things I decided to do was revisit both the 1870 and 1880 census with a fresh set of eyes as well as mindset. I also decided to set up a spreadsheet containing information from both censuses in order to better visualize and evaluate each neighborhood on it’s own as well as in comparison to the other, highlighting the names of persons that appeared on both censuses.

When I performed that initial cursory look, I declared that many of the names were the same between the two censuses, especially the African Americans surrounding Jesse Pierce / Pearce. However, as I really looked at both censuses it appears that my cursory assessment might have been a bit off track.

1870
County:	Greene
Enumeration District:
Inhabitants In:	Militia District 144
Post Office	Penfield
Page 90
Head of Households
Name	Age	Race	Sex
Alex Mumford	42	W	M
Jackson Mumford	60	B	M
Thomas Criddle	28	B	M
Joshua Laurence	23	B	M
William Coleman	39	W	M
Wyley Bryant	35	B	M
Elijah Anderson	27	B	M
Jas Bruce	24	W	M
Siney Criddle	76	W	F
Jesse Pearce	64	W	M
Lucinda Fig	46	W	F
King Pearce	58	B	M
Jefferson Pearce	21	B	M
Bird Pearce	26	M	M
Chas Pearce	34	B	M
Alfred Pearce	28	B	M
Anderson Jones	22	B	M
Mason Jones	60	B	M
Alonzo Pearce	18	B	M
Seaborn Pearce	34	B	M
Delila Pearce	27	B	F
Aggie Jasel	20	B	F
Theopelus Pearce	63	W	M
Seaborn Jordon	50	W	M
Daniel Grant	56	W	M
John Grant	44	W	M
Archibald Rhodes	55	W	M

1880
County:	Greene
Enumeration District:	35
Inhabitants In:	144 DC G.M.
Page 252
Head of Households
Name	Age	Race	Sex
Thomas Newsome	50	W	M
Archibald Mapp	31	W	M
Kato Lewis	60	B	M
Nilson Lewis	80	B	M
Archibold P Peek	42	W	M
Jesse F. Pierce	74	W	M
James Figs	26	W	M
Siberenie Pierce	45	W (B)	B
Martha Jackson	42	B	F
Miles Pierce	46	B	M
Jasper Pierce	30	Mu	M
Greene Pierce	48	B	M
King Pierce	69	B	M
Charles Pierce	44	Mu	M
Joseph Chester	22	B	M
Patsey Lundy	16	B	F
Henry Moore	48	B	M
Joseph S Anderson	27	W	M
Elisha Irby	65	W	M
Josiah Caldwell	74	W	M
Robbert Philips	21	W	M
George Moland	21	B	M
James Alfred	55	B	M

On the 1870 Census, there are 8 African-American enumerations for Pierce / Pearce households surrounding Jesse Pearce / Pierce. The 1880 Census contains five such enumerations, one of which is my 2^nd great grandfather, Jasper Pierce.

After looking closer at both censuses, it appears three families of African American Pierces appear on both census, that of King Pierce / Pearce; Chas / Charles Pierce; amd Seaborn / Siberenie Pearce / Pierce. It should be noted that on the 1880 census Seaborn / Siebernie is indicated as being white but the other information, age, contained on the census leads me to believe that this is the same person.

My question is where did the other families from the 1870 census go and where did the new families on the 1880 census come from?

As I continue the hunt to try to determine the last slave owner of my Pierce ancestors, I will try to answer these questions and hope that it leads to some breakthrough answers.

*****

To find out more about cluster research, I recommend reading some of Michael Hait's articles on this research technique.