Mam-ma's Southern Family

This is my third 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 cannot remember the year I started doing family research. It was after the birth of my children, so perhaps in the early 1990s. My daughters’ babysitter was a genealogist who visited the Family History Library in Salt Lake City every year and was actually there when my second child was born. I must have expressed an interest because she took me to Sutro Library in San Francisco where she set me down at a microfilm machine to look at the 1920 Soundex roll for Ravalli County, Montana. When I found my paternal grandfather, William Cyril Hork in that census and then in the 1910 census, I was hooked and wanted to go to the Family History Library with the group the following year! After my mother died in 1992, us six ...

Saying the names of the enslaved brings them to life. As I find these people in my ancestor’s records, I shall bring them to the light and say their names. They are an important part of the history of my ancestor’s lives and their livelihood. I am currently studying the life of Jemima Porter who married Daniel Coor around 1784 in North Carolina. [1] Fast forward, she died sometime before 18 February 1839, when George Madison Barnes began settling her estate. He, with sureties Samuel T. Scott and W. K. Perkins, posted the bond of twenty thousand dollars, which indicates an estate of large value. [2]   Bond, George M. Barnes, Jemima Coor Estate On the same day, the following men were ordered to appraise her estate: Edwin R. Brown, Moses Norman, Chas. J. Hendry, Andrew J. Cassity and Samuel H Aby. Aby, Brown, and Norman swore and signed the authorization for the appraisal. [3] E. R. Brown, P. H. Aby, and MD Norman performed the appraisal and issued the following list of the perso...

I am currently reading the book The Color of Law  by Richard Rothstein. [1] I had heard the term "systemic racism" but never really understood it until I began reading this book. This really opened my eyes about how discriminatory policies, from the federal government down to the local level, played a role in the racial inequities we have in America.  I found an example of this in my grandparent's papers.  In 1949, my maternal grandparents bought a house in a brand-new housing development in Pleasant Hill, California, called Gregory Gardens. [2]  From the deed included in the title company papers, I learned they paid $7800. [3] It might even have been the first home they bought. Previously, they were renting in neighboring Walnut Creek, but the man who owned their property wouldn’t sell it to them. It was a great opportunity for them to purchase a new home, although it also forced their daughter to change high school districts. Restrictive Covenant Besides...

This is my third 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 grandfather, Tom J. Johnston once grew a beard for a contest. I had written previously about my grandfather’s beard . This post is an update because I found a record held at the Contra Costa County Historical Society that substantiates the contest. In Walnut Creek, where my maternal grandparents, Tom J. and Pansy Johnston, and their daughter, Lela Nell, lived is a yearly festival in September called the Walnut Festival. Before large housing tracts were built, the area had numerous walnut orchards and a big packing plant in downtown Walnut Creek to process the walnuts. When I was growing up in the 1960s in Walnut Creek, many of the homes had some of these old walnut trees in their yards. Kids would come to s...