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)

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.

T.R. and Susie (Fowler) Miller

I am very excited about this "New Old Photo." These are my great-great grandparents Miller. Thomas Robert and Emily Susan (Fowler) Miller. I wrote about Susie in my brickwall blog. I have never seen a photo of Tom and Susie so I was thrilled when this photo was identified as them. The photo was probably taken about 1940 or '41 as Susie died in 1943. My great-aunt has provided the additional information that Susie died of cancer (her obituary just says a long illness). The location of the photo hasn't been identified but most of the others found with this were taken in Resaca, GA where my great-grandparents Patterson lived. This photo might have also been taken there or somewhere around Calhoun, GA (both are in Gordon Co., GA).

New Old Photos

This photo is actually one of many negatives I have from my great grandmother Patterson's house. For years I have wanted to get prints made but wanted to be sure I found someone I could trust with my precious negatives (I did find someone several years ago but then we moved and I just haven't had the heart to start over). A few days ago I decided to try scanning negatives and after a little trial and error here is a sample of the results!

This is a photo of my great grandparents (Thomas Edward and Ethel Irene (Miller) Patterson) and their two children, my grandfather and great-aunt. I am guessing this photo was taken when my grandfather was leaving for the Army. He turned 18 on D-Day so his WWII service took him all the way to the exotic locale of New Jersey (pretty far for a Georgia farm-boy).

This photo was supposedly taken in Resaca, GA at the family home.

UPDATE: My great-aunt (the little girl pictured) has provided some

more details about this picture. The photo was taken on a Sunday afternoon when my grandfather was home from basic training at Fort Bragg, NC. He went on to Fort Dix, NJ and almost went off to war from there. My great-aunt says she is sure her brother fixed her hair and tied her sash before they went to church that morning.

The car they are standing in front of is their "old Dodge" and the location is Resaca, GA. This house was actually owned by Miss Lulie Pitts of Calhoun, GA. The family lived there for a while. Today, the site is at the rest area off I-75 in Resaca.

Miller's Ferry, Calhoun, GA

The above picture is of Miller's Ferry outside Calhoun (Reeves Station area), GA. My great grandmother was Ethel Irene (nee Miller) Patterson. Her family ran this ferry across the Oostanaula River from about 1834. I'm not sure when the Ferry stopped running but today you can drive along Miller's Ferry Rd. For much of my childhood we drove right past Miller's Ferry Rd. (and the Miller family cemetery which was hidden back in some trees) on our way to my grandparents house (from Calhoun, GA to Armuchee, GA). I only discovered the road was there between 5 and 10 years ago and only discovered my great-aunt had a copy of this picture about four years ago. It seems my family has been holding out on me despite my almost two decades of pestering them for information. I'm hoping in the next 5 to 10 years one of them will magically produce a family bible I don't know about.