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. 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...

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 m...