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)  What did your ancestral families do during the Great Depression (1930-1940)? Did they keep their jobs and standard of living?  Did they suffer personally or economically? Thanks to Marian B. Wood for this week's SNGF challenge topic. Here's mine: My mother was born in 1934 during the Great Depression. Her father, Tom Johnston, was living at home with his father in 1930. He was just 17 years old and worked as a ranch hand. The family lived in Stephenville, Erath County, Texas, so not sure how far out of town he would have worked. [1] By the time he married Pansy Lancaster in 1933, he worked as a carpenter. In 1940, he had his own business doing woodworking. They lived in Stephenville, with her parents, Warren and Lela Lancaster, her brothers, Wayne and Rayburn D, and her aunt, ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings tonight is to: 1)  Have you found an unexpected record recently (or at any time) in your genealogy and family history research?  A document, a book, an article, a letter, etc.  2)  This week, please tell us about that unexpected record find and how it helped your research. 3)  Share your unexpected record find and how it helped your research with us in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it. NOTE:  He also said he could use ideas for different SNGF topics.  Please email him ( randy.seaver@gmail.com ). Here's mine: I spend most of my time researching at online sites in parts of their websites where the r...

This month, I spent a lot of time researching the Lancaster family, particularly these three gentlemen: George Warren Lancaster (1893-1964), his father William Carlton Lancaster (1873-1946), and his grandfather, George Wilson Lancaster (1839-1919). I searched at FamilySearch using full-text search for William C. and George Wilson Lancaster. See 12 for ’26: Full-text Search for William C. Lancaster (1873-1946) and Searching for George W. Lancaster (1839-1919) in Full-text Search . I also searched for newspaper articles at the Portal to Texas History for all three men: 12 for ’26: George Warren Lancaster in Newspaper Articles 12 for ’26: Newspaper Search at Portal to Texas History for William C. Lancaster 12 for ’26 Locating George Wilson Lancaster at the Portal for Texas History Newspaper Collection I have also written up the full-text search for George Wilson Lancaster in records of Rockwall County that are locked, but the task is not completed, as I ran out of time at th...

George W. Lancaster (1839-1919) lived in Kaufman County, Rockwall County, Dallas County, Erath County, and Johnson counties during his lifetime. His grandson, George Warren Lancaster lived in Erath County at the same time and it was sometimes confusing as to which person the G.W. Lancaster is referring to. However, he has also been found as “Grandpa” Lancaster, Geo. W. Lancaster, and George W. Lancaster. Many of the early dated articles refer to the towns of Lancaster in other states. There is even a town called that in Texas. What I Learned I did not find many articles; all are from Erath County. I learned he had a letter waiting for him in 1893, and I speculated that it could have been from the Arizona Territory court where his wife filed for divorce. He sold land to the Baptist preacher, R. L. Smallwood, with whom he also spent time. He made visits to Howell Springs in his later years. He died on 14 January 1919 and was buried at Greens Creek Cemetery. One death notice clarified h...

George Wilson Lancaster, born 3 April 1839 in Missouri, likely Lewis County, and died 14 Jan 1919 in Erath County. He also lived in Kaufman County as he married Martha Jane Polly there on 25 October 1871. He is my 3x-great-grandfather on my mother’s side. This session of research is using full-text search at FamilySearch . My methodology is to search for the each of the variations of George’s name: “George W. Lancaster,” “Geo. W. Lancaster,” and “G. W. Lancaster.” I began by filtering the results to Texas, and selecting the counties of Erath, Rockwall, and Kaufman. I later conducted the same search in Arizona, as he lived there shortly in the late 1880s. The results brought up lots of negative hits, i.e., records that were not him. Many were Texas Death Certificates state-wide or documents dated after his death in 1919. The record of findings lists the results I believe pertain to him. Summary of results From this targeted search for G.W. Lancaster in the various spellings, I fou...