Mam-ma's Southern Family

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)   Share something unexpected that you have found while researching an ancestor.   [thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!] Here's mine: I knew my grandfather, Tom J. Johnston, served in the United States Navy during World War II because I have a photo of him in his uniform. He is shown here with my mother. My grandmother saved his wallet after he died in 1971 and gave it to me sometime in the 2000s. One of the cards in the wallet was a Certificate of Discharge. I was excited because I needed his service number to order his military service record. The Navy records did not burn in the 1973 fire at the Personnel Records Office. He was discharged on 17 July 1944 at Farragut, Idaho. It didn’t occur to me then that he was discharged before the end of the war. I placed the order for his records.

In May of this year, a friend and I took a trip to Dallas, Texas, to spend ten days doing family research. Besides governmental offices, historical societies, and libraries, our trip included trips to cemeteries. We visited six cemeteries in Comanche County, two in Jack County, one in Fannin County, one in Rockwall County, and two in Pontotoc County in Oklahoma. Some of these were for my friend and I don’t have family in Oklahoma or Jack and Fannin County. Even though the markers have images on  Find a Grave , I want my own photos so I can freely use them and not have to take the time to ask permission from the photographer of the image on  Find a Grave . Be sure to take a photo of the entrance with the name of the cemetery before you take photos within the cemetery. Visiting more than one cemetery on a trip will keep the photos separated between cemeteries. Here is a shot of my friend, Jacqueline, taking a photo of a stone of her family. The cemeteries I visited and took photos of my

Lela Ann Lancaster, my maternal great-grandmother, died on 17 May 1951. [1] She had died in Wichita Falls, Texas, at the state hospital. The doctor’s handwriting is nearly illegible so the cause of death is difficult to determine. She was conflicted with Parkinson’s Disease which probably contributed to her death. Her funeral was three days later. [2] Lela Ann (left) with Warren, daughter Pansy, granddaughter Lela Nell, and son Wayne, c. 1935 Obituary Tells Story of Life Two obituaries were published on the same day in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune on two different pages. One gave information about her life and the funeral, and the other was about who attended her funeral. The transcription of the first is here: "Mrs. Warren G. Lancaster"    Funeral services for Mrs. Warren G. Lancaster, 55, who died at 4:30 a.m. Thursday at a Wichita Falls Hospital, were at 3 p.m. Sunday at the First Baptist Church with the Rev. Felix Gresham and the Rev. Ernest Rippetoe officiating

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  When was the last time you visited the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, or visited a local FamilySearch Center? 2)  What record collections are on your To-Do List, whether at the FamilySearch Library, a FamilySearch Center, the Full-Text Search feature online, or Digital Microfilm on the Images, or Catalog Link on the FamilySearch.org website? Here’s mine: This is simple. On the first and third Wednesdays of the month, I volunteer at the Oakland FamilySearch Center from 4-8 pm. If there is no patron to help, then I work on something of my own, either checking locked films or looking at subscription databases on the FamilySearch computers that I do not subscribe to. However, the last time I was on the FamilySearch website was Thursday. I began looking at deed indexes for land records in Lewis County, Kentucky

Three deeds in a row, almost all identical, tell the story of farmers in Erath County, Texas, who leased a portion of their land for oil and gas exploration in 1915. Oil Well Drill, Texas Patent 732,925 Portal to Texas History Ebenezer Loveless, George W. Lancaster, and William Carlton Lancaster leased land to the Healdton Oil & Gas Development Company. [1] They received a dollar for the “sole purpose of exploring, mining and operating for oil and gas, and of laying pipelines and of building tanks, powers, stations and structures thereon to produce, save and take care of said products, with right of ingress and egress and all conveniences necessary to said operations.” The company had within a year to demonstrate whether there existed gas or oil in paying quantities in or under the lands, they were to put in a test well and the lease would be valid for five years. If oil or gas was found within that first year, then the lease would remain in effect until the oil or gas was exh

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!!   Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:  1)  Have you created a Kinship List for any of your ancestors or relatives in your genealogy software program?  If so, select an Ancestor - say, one of your great-grandparents, and create a Kinship List of all of their descendants.  Or another ancestor further back in time. 2)  Show us your work - how you did it, and the Kinship List generated (at least one page of it). Here’s mine: I followed Randy’s instructions as I have RootsMagic and have never used this report. This is what I did: 1)  On my "People" action page on the left-hand menu, I highlighted Nathan H.O. Polly (1820-1902). He is my maternal 4 th great-grandfather and the 2x-great-grandfather of my Mam-ma. 2)  I clicked on the "Publish" action on the left-hand menu, and then opened "All Reports and Charts" 3)  On the list

It all began with a newspaper article in the Galveston Daily News on 21 February 1893. This article mentioned my ancestor, N.H.O. Polly, a person I have been researching lately and one of whom I tried to locate more information during my recent trip to Texas. Low Hanging Fruit Senator Goss introduced a bill “For the relief of N. H. O. Polly by reimbursing him for losses sustained by reason of Indian depredations in the years 1858, 1859, and 1860.” [1] This one sentence out of a much larger article gave me several pieces of information. I have the dates that Polly lived in Montague County. It is a burned county and any early records of him buying and selling land are gone. I learned that there were Indian problems in those years. Many of the history books talk about the Indian raids and deaths from these. I also learned that the senator who introduced the bill was Goss. Checking the Legislative Reference Library of Texas, I learned Goss’ full name: Demosthenes Franklin Goss (1855-1