Mam-ma's Southern Family

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...

I spent a day and a half using the Portal to Texas History website searching for articles about William Carlton Lancaster in newspapers, primarily in Erath County. However, it appears he moved to a town in Lubbock County in the 1920s and 30s. I searched using the following terms: “William Carlton Lancaster,” “William Carl Lancaster,” “William C. Lancaster,” “Wm C. Lancaster,” “W.C. Lancaster,” “Carl Lancaster,” “Corrie Lancaster,” and “C. Lancaster.” The last was in papers in Lynn County. Originally, I recorded them in a Word document chronologically by the name I searched, but I have now presented them in date order, the oldest first, so I can see any patterns. My comments are in blue. These total 144 articles. I uploaded them to Claude AI and after some discussion on how to format it, the articles were converted into a csv file with headings that I chose. I then uploaded the csv file to AirTable where I will analyze to choose the best articles for W.C. Lancaster’s biography in...