Mam-ma's Southern Family

Mam-ma was a tomboy. You wouldn’t know it by the fact she was also a lover of clothes. When she was young, she sewed her own clothes. She also loved shopping for new clothes and she loved looking nice. For many years, turquoise was her favorite color, but in later life pinks and purples also became part of her color palette. A dress she made But she told me she was really a tomboy. She was named Pansy Louise but she hated her name, feeling it sounded too sissy. She liked sports and played softball as a young woman. But as the only girl in a household of boys and her mother being ill with Parkinson’s disease, she had to do a lot of housework and taking care of her younger brothers. So she learned to cook, clean, and sew. She married at 19 and had my mother at 20. She worked as a seamstress, mending and altering men’s clothing and as a saleslady in women’s and men’s clothing stores. She worked at Goldman’s and for many years at The Clothes Horse, working at both the Walnut Creek and ...

Randy Seaver’s SNGF this week is to pick one of my grandfathers, find out the date of birth, day of week, what famous events happened on that day in history, and what famous people were born on that day.  Here are my answers. 1. My maternal grandfather, Tom J. Johnston, was born 7 Oct 1912.  This was a Monday. 2. Important events on that day (from Wikipedia ) 1542 – Explorer Cabrillo discovers Santa Catalina Island off of the California coast. 1826 – The Granite Railway begins operations as the first chartered railway in the U.S. 1949 – The communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed. 1963 – John F. Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Test Ban Treaty . 1912 – The Helsinki Stock Exchange sees its first transaction. 3. Famous people born on 7 October: 1728 – Caesar Rodney , American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 4th Governor of Delaware (d. 1784) 1885 – Niels Bohr , Danish physicist and philosopher, Nobel Prize...

Matrilineal Monday is a blogging theme to celebrate or share something of your mother’s line. This week I have been cleaning up files from my to-do list and found some COOR, WELCH, and KETHLEY marriages from Copiah County, Mississippi. I had the dates of these marriages from marriage indexes but not the images of the actual marriage record page from the county clerk. I found these records from films at the Family History Library. Today I’ll share the two marriage records for my third great-grandmother, Melissa Ann Welch . Melissa was born 8 May 1840 to Dempsey Welch and Elizabeth Rebecca Young . [1] She married first to J. T. Pittman on 31 Oct 1855 in Copiah County, Mississippi. [2] Marriage for J.T. Pittman & Melissa Ann Welch in 1855 There is not much information given in these marriage records and lots of blanks spaces left blank. So would have been nice if the clerk had filled in the parent’s names! The bondsman, Thomas G. Welch was her brother, Thomas Grif...

Our assignment this week from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is: 1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 19 July 1914 - 100 years ago. 2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist? 3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post. I’ll start with my maternal line: My great grandparents, Thomas Newton Johnston (1885-1951) and Nell L. Hutson (1888-1919) were living in Gustine, Comanche County, Texas. Their eldest son, my grandfather, Tom J. Johnston Jr, (1912-1973) was living with them. Thomas Newton Johnston’s parents, Reuben Mack Johnston (1841-1924) and Olivia Jane Jones (1859-1914) were also living in Gustine, Comanche County, Texas. Olivia died later that year on 11 Dec. Nell L. Hutson’s p...

Here’s another great challenge from Randy Seaver of Genea-musing.  You can see his blog post here . 1) We're going to do a little bit of Semi-Random Research tonight... 2) Go to your family tree database of choice (you know, like RootsMagic, Reunion, Ancestry Member Tree), and determine who the very first person on your list of C surnames is. Or the first person on your list of J surnames. Or P surnames. Or any other name you need to research. Your choice! 3) What do you know (or not know) about this person based on your research? It's OK to do more research if you need to - in fact, it's encouraged! 4) How are you related to this person, and why is s/he in your family tree? 5) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook Status post or Google+ Stream post. This seemed like fun. I tried picking some letters in my RootsMagic program but kept coming up with people who were still alive, which I don’t want to wri...

This is week 18 of the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge” by Amy Crow from  No Story Too Small .  I am a bit behind but intend to catch up. This week I’m writing about Ellis W. Lancaster, who was my maternal fourth great-grandfather. In his lifetime, he lived in four states: Virginia , where he was born on 7 Jul 1808; Shelby Co, Kentucky where he was married on 10 Jun 1831 to Elizabeth S. Neel; Missouri, where his eight children were all born; and Kaufman Co, Texas , where he died shortly before 13 Sep 1866. [1] Ellis was most likely named after the maiden name of his mother, Sarah Ellis. Ellis’ father was Robert Lancaster. As stated above, Ellis married Elizabeth S. Neel in Shelby Co, Kentucky and they moved to Missouri shortly after that, as evidence by their first born child, Sarah A. Lancaster, was born 11 April 1832 in Missouri. [2]   The following children were: James R. Lancaster, born Sep 1835, death unknown William T Lancaster, born...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has a fun exercise he asks others to do along with him on Saturday nights. Tonight's fun is to write about what happened on the day our mother was born. We are to answer these questions: What day of the week was your Mother born? Tell us how you found out. What has happened in recorded history on your Mother's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events. What famous people have been born on your Mother's birth date? Tell us how you found out, and list five of them. Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook or Google+. My mother, Lela Nell Johnston, was born on 21 August 1934. That was a Tuesday. I found it on a website called " What Day of the Week? " Historical events that happened on that date in history [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_21]: 1680  –  Pueblo Indians  capture  Santa Fe  from  Spanish  du...