52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 4: Invite to Dinner

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

This week I’m writing about an ancestor I’d like to invite to dinner. I actually have quite a few ideas. I would love to have dinner with my grandmother, Anna Hork and her sister, Loretta Patterson, and recreate the meals we had together back in 1969 when we visited. They told such fantastic stories about their childhood. Of course, I wasn’t a genealogist then. We didn’t have access to recording devices either. I don’t remember much about their stories except they made me laugh every evening!

But to invite one person to dinner!

That would be my 3X-great-grandfather, Samuel Johnston. I would love to know about his life in South Carolina where he was born, his life in Alabama where most of his children were born, in Mississippi where his youngest was born, and in Texas where he moved and died.

The places where he lived, specifically Yalobusha County, Mississippi, and Titus County, Texas, had courthouse files and many of the records were destroyed. Records, such as land deeds, that would help me flesh out his life. Records that might tell me where he lived in Alabama. Records that might tell me where he was born in South Carolina. Records that might tell me when he married Elizabeth “Betsy” McCormack.

What I know about him is this: Samuel Johnston was born about 1816 in South Carolina (no county known). He married Elizabeth McCormack sometime before 1840. She was also born in South Carolina, so maybe that’s where they married. They lived in Yalabusha County, Mississippi in 1850 and 1860 but moved to Titus County, Texas perhaps at the beginning of the Civil War. He was in the tax records in 1862 but by 1870, his wife is a widow.

They had the following children:
  • Isabella (b. 1840) who married Paris C. Broadstreet
  • Reuben Mack (b. 1841) who married Catherine Skull and Olivia Jane Jones
  • Luvina J (b. 1842)
  • Washington J (b. 1844) who married Willie Rachel Price & Julie
  • Marion J (b. 1846)
  • David Newton (b. 1850)
  • Sarah A (b. 1854) who married James E. McDonald

Now I should consider what I’d serve. I’d want him to feel comfortable and willing to talk about his life. Good southern food would be certainly the ticket: fried chicken, black-eyed peas, corn, and biscuits. These are the dishes I remember my grandmother making.


At dinner, I would ask all of these questions, but I would especially ask, “Who were your parents? And "Where in South Carolina were you born?”
Because he is one of my biggest brick walls.

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family

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