Mid-week Mayhem

This whole week feels like mayhem to me so I'm going to forgo the tale of one of my misbehaving ancestors and share a little of what is creating my mayhem.
Mainly it's my volunteer work with the local genealogical society (Fairfax Genealogical Society). We have just completed our annual Spring Conference. This was the first year we held it over two days and it went quite well. We're a bit behind on our speaker selections for next year and we need to nail all of the details down so we can advertise. This weekend several members are attending the MAGS Conference and we're hoping they can take some flyers about next year's programs but we have to get them done first!
Next week is the annual Genealogy Fair at the National Archives in D.C. We'll have a table there with assorted information about our programs next year. If you're in the D.C. area, this is a free event. This is the first year they're holding it over two days.
Hopefully everyone already knows about the NGS Conference in the States coming up in May in Raleigh, NC. My husband and I are both really looking forward to this. We always enjoy the national conferences but we lived in Raleigh prior to moving here and are looking forward to the chance to see some friends we haven't seen in four years!
Preparing materials for all these events always keeps me busy this time of year. Unfortunately I'm just a little farther behind than in the past.

D.W. Miller Tombstone

This is the headstone of my 3rd great-grandparents Dennis W. Miller and Mary E. (Brown) Miller. As you can probably guess, Mary outlived D.W. She should have a death certificate but I have been unable to locate it. According to her obituary she died in January 1927.
Last week I blogged about my 5th great-grandfather Miller's tombstone and this week it's my 3rd great-grandfather. I don't know where my 4th great-grandfather Miller is buried (Dennis Miller). Like his grandfather, D.W. is buried in Miller Cemetery. Since David's tombstone is new, it is possible neither he nor Dennis are buried in Miller Cemetery, or both may be buried there in unmarked graves. The cemetery is not very large and it is difficult to tell if there are any locations which could be the graves of David and Dennis Miller.
(by-the-way, it is only my direct line that has so many "D" Millers, the other children don't have "D" names)

Mapping Monday

With last week's window fun I haven't had a chance to map anything new. Sadly this week isn't looking much better. It was free and clear but now I have agreed to four meetings (in addition to the two I attended today!). So, to try and satisfy any mapping desires my readers might have, I'm providing this image of some of my other Gordon Co., GA ancestors.
In this image you can see several places I marked by overlaying an old Civil War map I found online (map overlay is most of what appears 'white'). This map was produced as a negative and rougher than the one I had used for the Calhoun area. The advantage of this map was that it showed a few of my ancestors lands and home. I believe the map only shows Union sympathizers but I'm not positive.
This map was much easier to work with by making the background transparent (in Photoshop). Since the quality of the map was not as exact it took more twisting to accurately place it. Being able to see all the features of the map AND all the satellite image features sped things up. I've found if you can get your map to have white features and a transparent background it is much easier to work with, especially if you're trying to locate small features on the ground (such as the two ferries above or the three homesteads).

Apologies

Well, I had my own bit of Mid-week mayhem yesterday when we suddenly found out they would be installing our new windows today. That leaves my office in even more shambles than usual (because my desk and filing cabinet are in front of the window and have to be moved) and me rather left out in the cold.

This does make me wonder, though. Did my ancestors have windows? I know those I research most (living in the mid-nineteenth century) lived in a single room log cabin for the most part. I can't deal with feeling the wind when I sit at my office desk with the window closed, I bet they felt the wind through the walls! So I won't get much done today but perhaps I'm a little closer to my ancestors, at least for a little while.

David Miller Tombstone

This is the only known headstone for my 5th great-grandfather David Miller. You can see it is a later marker placed since the location of David and his wife is unknown. David was born in South Carolina about 1770. He died in Gordon Co., GA between 29 Sep 1852 and 1 Aug 1854. This tombstone is found in Miller Cemetery (also known as Reeves Cemetery) in Calhoun, GA (Reeves Station area). If you're coming from Hwy 53 on the Reeves Station Rd., you cross the rail road tracks (Reeves Station) and there is a field and then trees. The cemetery is back in the trees on the top of a small hill. I believe this is private property and the "road" to the cemetery is actually a driveway but I'm not sure. You probably want to check before visiting! If anyone knows who placed this newer tombstone, I would like to know. Years ago I was given (electronically) some information about David from another researcher and I have never been able to track the researcher down again and find out where they got their information.

Mapping Mondays

You may not be able to see the details on this image as clearly as you'd like but I just wanted to start with something fairly simple for those not familiar with Google Earth.
This is a snapshot of the Calhoun, GA area. Calhoun is near the upper right corner. The Oostanaula River runs along the left half of the image. The red/fuchsia boxes represent the land lots bought by my Miller ancestors. These are just the early lots. Part of Filing Fridays will be to locate copies of their other deeds and enter those lots into Google Earth.
I was able to place my own three types of places on this map using different methods and I'll talk about these in other posts. The Miller Cemetery was located using the GNIS system and simply entering the coordinates and placing a marker there. Miller's Mill was located using an old Civil War map I found online. I marked a number of other places using that map and others but it gets rather crowded so I only showed the Mill on this image. The land lots were placed using other old maps showing the land lots and then drawing polygons to represent the lots (I already had a spreadsheet listing the lot descriptions so I didn't have to dig through my files to locate copies of the deeds).
You can see that it is quite nice being able to see my historic places on a modern satellite image. I'll feature some other images in future posts as well as some general information about Google Earth.

Genealogical Kindness

I want to take a moment for a "Thank You" and also a little "encouragement."
Last month I randomly received an e-mail asking if I had documentation for a particular fact shown in one of my online trees. After a little back and forth I received another e-mail from this individual with a link to a web page (not one of his own but containing information he gave). On the web page is the image of a family Bible entry for the children of Henry Mitchell. Until I received that first random e-mail I did not even know my Henry Mitchell ("Henry Smith Mitchell") was the son of Henry Mitchell (who owned the Bible) and now I have an image of the Bible showing his siblings and date of birth.
I want to give a very big THANK YOU to R.L. Guffin for locating that family Bible and having the image posted online. Far too often I've been told information came from a family bible but no one seems to have the bible. I'm always apprehensive in such situations. What if names have been added to the list of children that actually were found in the Bible? What if there isn't a Bible? It's like a big game of telephone, the first person says, "I'd love to find this list of siblings in a Bible record," the next says "There might be a Bible record showing these siblings," the next says "this list of siblings came from a Bible record."
Particularly with Bible records, if you can (are allowed to) post hte image online, do. I've heard too many stories about how the family Bible was thrown out when someone died. This seems unlikely to genealogists but it's not always genealogists that are in charge of clearing out a home. A high quality image can sometimes be even better than looking at the original and posting it on the Internet puts the image in the hands of many people. Next time you see an old family Bible with genealogical information in it, try and get photos and post them online. Maybe you have friends that own an old Bible, they may not want to sell it but if they're not genealogists they may not have shared the information in it, either.
I know there is one missing old Bible in my family. I have two Civil War Union Pensions that state the family Bible was destroyed when their sister's house burned down. I'm still hoping another relative copied some of that information into their own Bible, though. Now if it would just miraculously appear on the Internet!

Filing Fridays

I keep tyring to come up with themes that work with my research but it's harder than it sounds. After attending the FxGS Conference last week I was inspired to work on several quasi-research projects. The first was to try out Google Earth which I finally found time to do Wednesday. I've already uncovered a new county to research in and that was just playing around with the program! The other project I wanted to work on is filing, both filing those piles of materials, and cleaning out my paper files, AND digitizing files. I decided Friday should be "Filing Friday" and I'm challenging everyone to post comments with updates on their successful filing efforts.

I'm going to start my first Filing Friday by combining filing with Google Earth and pulling deed records from my files and scanning them. I'll then do my best to locate the land with the help of Google Earth (this will be part of my new "Mapping Mondays" so check out those posts for details on Google Earth). I'm fortunate that the bulk of my research so far has been in parts of Georgia that were distributed by lottery (mainly the Cherokee and Gold Lotteries). In recent years I've finally started to back track to the Eastern Georgia border and slowly out of Georgia which will lead to metes and bounds lands but for all those Georgia lottery lands, I'm fortunate to have plenty of maps and the lots are mainly rectangular (those that aren't usually follow rivers or are on the border of another location, both easy situations to deal with). I mention this because using mapping as an excuse to work on filing is not a tedious process for me. If you have to sit down with your protractor and ruler and assorted other tools this probably isn't a great way to try and work through your files but maybe you have another project to force you to file. If so, share it by posting a comment any Filing Friday.

New Records at Footnote.com

I'm really excited to see these new records at footnote.com...
The Guion Miller Roll Applications (NARA microfilm M1104, footnote.com calls this the "Eastern Cherokee Applications") has just been released and is slowly being added (the index and additional documentation is already complete, footnote.com calls this the "Guion Miller Roll"). Back in October or November I realized these applications were probably the source for much of the Patterson family information I had seen but been unable to verify. After living within a short distance of NARA for over 3 years I went downtown and broke through my biggest brickwall. I had given up finiding direct documentation by that point so I was almost overwhelmed when there it was in black and white in front of me. At the same time I felt very silly for practically sitting on this information for 3 years. These applications have provided documentation for other brickwalls (and built onto at least one) so I'm thrilled at the possibility of being able to search them electronically. Who knows what else I will find in them.

Hicks K. Patterson Mayhem

I'll begin my first official "Mid-week Mayhem" post with the first mayhem I learned about in my family.

My great-aunt (who I've mentioned in several other posts) told me this story shortly after I began resarching my Patterson ancestors. She said her uncle Hicks (not to be confused with our great [great...] grandfather Hicks) killed his brother over a moonshine still. I didn't particularly do anything with this information and never came across any further information. My great-great aunt made some passing comment about it one time when I mentioned it to her but nothing memorable.
At some point I learned my 3rd great-uncle Asa was convicted of murder (more details on that in another post). One document indicated he had killed his brother so it seemed the story I was told by my aunts was a generation off (the uncle Hicks of my aunts' story was the nephew of Asa).
Low and behold, in 2006 I randomly received an e-mail with the image of a newspaper clipping in it. The sender had been told it was probably from the 1880s, about the time of Asa's problems. When I started looking into the Pattersons mentioned it became clear the clipping was much newer. Just to be sure I even verified the years of service of the Pickens Co., GA Sheriff mentioned. Because the clipping is so new I won't post the image here but here's a summary of what happened (according to the newspaper at least)...
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In late February 1948 Hicks Patterson "slashed" the throat of his brother Edward over the price of a fighting cock. Edward was found lying next to the road alive. He refused to name his assailaint saying he knew who did it but wouldn't say. He survived a few more hours after making this statement.
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There are a few points that are definitely incorrect in this articles. The article states Hicks was 70 and Edward 80, these ages are backwards. Hicks was the older, b. 1867, and Edward was ten years younger. My initial response is to believe the newspaper is at least partially hyping the story since a 70 year old man has his throat "slashed," lies next to the road bleeding, is found and makes a statement, and after several hours finally dies.
Since I only learned in 2006 that the players in this drama were actually those mentioned by my great-aunt, and due to the recent date of the events (i.e. the records aren't microfilmed and accessible in many locations), I haven't been able to pursue this story as much as I would like. I don't know what happened to Hicks K. with regards to this crime. He died in 1950. My great-aunt remembers visiting him. She says he was an old man with a long white beard and he was propped up in a big four poster bed. From this description I'm pretty sure he wasn't in prison. I'm not positive but my great-aunt may have said these visits were at Hicks's home.