Mam-ma's Southern Family

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. In 1811, John Core [Coor] of Sampson County, North Carolina, obtained a passport to travel through “Indian Nations to the Western Country.” He was with his mother, his four sisters and two small children – negroes. Also receiving passports at the same, and thus may have been traveling with John were Mr. John Keayhey [Kethley] with his wife, seven children, and three negroes from Richmond County, North Carolina, and William and Henry Toler, from Cumberland. [1] Here is the image from the book. This is a transcript of course, not the actual passport. [2] During the 1930s, the passports as a project of the WPA, were transcribed/abstracted by two members of the Samuel Sorrel Chapter in Houston of the Nationa...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Mistakes can happen when we make wrong assumptions. We misread an entry because of poor or fading handwriting. We think the woman in the 1860 census is the mother of the children listed, when she could be the second wife and step-mother. The records we look at could have errors. The parish priest baptizes several children on one Sunday and then mixes up their parent’s names in the record book. The county clerk of deeds fails to copy all the items in a land description which makes it difficult to plat out because a call is missing. The census enumerator mishears a name or age or place of birth. Have you ever had a person listed in a census that you couldn’t find again? Sure, they may have died between ...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. My maternal second great-grandaunt, Margaret “Maggie” Rose Lancaster, was the only daughter of George W. Lancaster and Martha Jane Polly. She had two older brothers, William Carl and Lonnie O., and three younger brothers, George Eldon, Reginold F., and Jesse Polly. So she grew up with only brothers until her mother’s second marriage to Noah Flood Parks. She then had two half-sisters, Daisy O. and Rosy A. Parks. Early Life Maggie was born 27 April 1880 in Rockwall County, Texas. [1] Her early life was spent in Texas and then in the late 1880s her father moved the family to Maricopa County, Arizona. [2] However, her father left the family and returned to Texas. Her oldest brother, Carl, went with him. H...

This is my second year 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 Famil y or at My Trails Into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. My grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster, had three younger brothers: Rayburn Dinion (R.D.), Carl Jr., and Elda Wayne (Teensy) Lancaster. [1] Carl lived only six days after his pre-mature birth, and is buried in Upper Greens Creek Cemetery in Erath County, Texas. [2] Her brother, R.D. was seven years younger and Teensy was another seven years younger. In fact, my mother was born another seven years after Teensy. My grandmother finished high school and then married in 1933. Both brothers attended college after high school. Perhaps because they were both boys, they each got the opportunity to attend college, or perhaps finances were better later in the 1930s and 40s. R.D. played basketball and footb...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have already written about my current challenge of trying to solve the origins and parents of Samuel Johnston (1816-1869) here and here . I just returned from attending the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh , abbreviated GRIP, where I attended the week-long class, “Tools and Strategies for Tackling Tough Research Problems,” coordinated by Kimberly Powell and included instructors, Angela Packer McGhie, Karen Stanbary, and Karen Mauer Jones. You can read about the course on the above link. I brought this problem to the course. Our pre-class instructions were to pick a tough problem and write it up to share with other classmates. I had attempted to do that—many times even—because I hav...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. There is a story through my maternal grandmother’s line that we have Native American ancestry. The story was told to many of my cousins. It is usually one of the questions I get asked from second and third cousins who find me on the internet. I have not found any paper documents that support this legend. All census and vital records support that our families were white. [1] DNA test results for my grandmother also supports a European ancestry. Her mtDNA test shows her Haplogroup as U5 and my Haplogroup is U5b1. [2]   Native American Haplogroups are A, B, C, D, and X. [3] Of course this eliminates that the Native American ancestry on her maternal line. There could still be some trace among her other a...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I always thought that my mother and her parents were the first of my mother’s family to live in California. Tom J. Johnston, his wife, Pansy Louise, and daughter, Lela Nell, came to California during World War II. Tom worked on construction projects for the US military. However, when working on my Lancaster line, I discovered that Pansy’s great-grandmother, Martha Jane (Polly) Lancaster, died in Orosi, Tulare County, California in 1932. [1] She had been in California twenty-nine years, and six years in that town. So how did she come to be in California in 1903 when her husband, George W. Lancaster, died in Dublin, Erath County, Texas on 14 January 1919? [2] There was a divorce between Martha Jane...