Mam-ma's Southern Family

My mother died in 1992 and as I began working on the genealogy of her family, I got to thinking about where she came from. My mom was born in Stephenville in Erath County, Texas in 1934. Her mother, my Mam-ma, was still alive at age 82 years old, and in 1995, I asked her if she’d like to take a trip to Texas to show me where she and Mom lived. She thought it a great idea. I purchased our plane tickets and she made arrangements with her niece, Sandra Hall, to pick us up from the airport and stay the night with her, and then drive us down to stay with her brother, RD Lancaster, in Stephenville.  Me with Hal and Sandra We only stayed four days. In hindsight, I wished I had had time to do some real research in the library in Stephenville and check out the historical society and the library at Tarleton University in town. Since doing newspaper research, I would also go to the genealogy library in Dublin. But I was still a rookie genealogist and didn’t think of these things. However, R...

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of  Genea-Musings  is to: 1) What genealogical discovery surprised you? [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!] 2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note. Here's mine: Surprisingly, I have not had a lot of surprises in my research. I have many brick walls, as we all do. There are always new parents to find for our outermost ancestors on the family tree. But I can speak about a small surprise. For many years, I could not find a trace of George W. Lancaster’s wife, Martha Polly, nor their younger children. The oldest son, William Carlton Lancaster, is the one I descend from through his oldest son, George W. Lancaster, who is my mother’s maternal grandfather. The thirty-two-year-old George W. Lancaster married Martha Polly, who was sixteen, on 25 October 1871 in Kaufman Cou...