Mam-ma's Southern Family

It's Saturday Night , time for more Genealogy Fun !! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another challenge for us this week.  For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to: 1)  Pick one of your ancestral lines - any one - patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc.  Pick a long one if you can. 2)  Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation.  For example "third child, first son."  Also list how many children were born to these parents.  3)  Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.     My longest lines are on my mother’s side, since my father’s ancestors were pretty recent immigrants. I have yet to find the immigrant ancestors on my mother’s side except for the Lancaster line. 1. Lisa Suzanne Hork (1954–…), I am the oldest child, first daug...

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 first trip to a county courthouse was in Stephenville, Erath County, Texas. It was at the beginning of my genealogy research experience and I was not very careful about where I obtained information or what was the best method to use. I had made the trip to Stephenville with my grandmother, Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston, whom I called Mam-ma, in order to visit the places in town where my mother, who had passed away three years before, grew up. We stayed with her brother, R.D. and sister-in-law, Barbara Lancaster, who lived outside of town. R.D. drove Mam-ma and me all around Stephenville, with me sitting in the back seat. It was not the best place to see where you were going. Looking out the...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again - time for  some more Genealogy Fun !! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to: 1)  One of our family stories for our descendants should be how we met our spouse.  Another one should be, if we know it, how did our parents meet each other? 2)  This week, let's tell our "parents meeting" story if we know it.  If you don't know that story, tell us another one about one of your relatives meeting their spouse or significant other. 3)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a comment on this blog post to lead us to your answers. Way back in October 2015, we wrote about this same subject. My post from then is here . Instead, I’ll write about how my grandparents met.  Pansy Louise Lancaster and Tom J Johnston were married on 15 December 1933 by the Comanche County, Texas, Justice of the Peace...

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 surnames that begin with Love: Love, Lovelace, and Loveless. When I first began to do research, my grandmother told me her mother’s name was Lela Ann Loveless. “The LOVELESS, not the one ending in LACE.” So I dutifully began looking for Loveless surnames in census and other records. It didn’t take long to discover that the surname could be spelled many ways. Besides Loveless and Lovelace, I found Lovelass, Lovless, Lovelis, and other variations. So what I learned was spelling doesn’t count. Early recorders of information wrote what they heard and didn’t bother about the “proper” way to spell a name. Maybe even the Loveless ancestor didn’t know how to spell their own name. Where did this nam...

Randy Seaver, of Genea-Musing has another mission for us: Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music!) , is to: 1)   How many generations do you have photographs or portraits of your ancestors and descendants?  It can be any line...it just can't be broken! 2)  Tell us the line, or better yet, show us the unbroken line.  Provide birth-death years, and the approximate date that the photograph or portrait was made. 3)  Share your generation picture line in a blog post of your own, or in a Facebook post, or in a comment to this post.  Well I have five generations that I can show in two photos and a third if I wish to double up in the center (which I’ll do). My second great-grandparents , Ebenezer Loveless and his wife, Eliza A. Rogers, along with their daughter, my great-grandmother , Lela Ann Loveless. My great-grandmother , Lela Ann (Loveless) Lancaster with her daughter ...

"http://worldartsme.com/">WorldArtsMe Eight years ago today I attended a class at the California Genealogical Society on starting a blog. It was great fun and I have enjoyed these past eight years. I have not written as much on this blog. It has limited subject matter, being the ancestors of my maternal grandmother. I have another blog that covers the rest of my family and my husband's family, and I tend to make more posts there. Over the past year, I have written 21 posts. Several of them got great reception. Here are the five with the most views: Lancaster Family in Rockwall County, Texas 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 30: Colorful – Earliest Color Photo in the Johnston Family 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 19: Mother’s Day 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 8: Where There’s a Will: the Will of James Loveless of Greenville Co, SC Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Relatives With Facial Hair I am continuing the 52 Ancestors meme this coming year ...

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 October 1995, I took my grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster Johnston, whom I call Mam-ma, on a trip to Stephenville, Texas, so I could see where my mother grew up. My mother had passed away on 2 Feb 1992, so I couldn’t take her, or even ask her about her early life in Texas before moving to California. I hadn’t started my genealogy adventure until after her death and I have such regrets now. So I thought the next best thing would be to take my grandmother to Texas where she could show me first-hand some of the places they lived. I paid for the trip, and she made the arrangements with family as to where we would stay. We were picked up from the airport in Fort Worth by my grandfather’s niece, Sa...