Friday, January 12, 2001

Finding Your Folks

By JUDY KILGORE
jkilgore@thecitizennews.com

What ignites the spark that causes people to spend hours in musty old courthouses poring over records that are, in some cases, more than 150 years old? What causes us to travel around the country, trekking through old cemeteries, and get goose bumps when we find great-great-great grandmother Sarah's grave? What causes us to spend hours on the computer seeking others who have the same ancestors and putting our information into a readable database? Different things.

Members of the LDS church (Mormons) were doing this long before some of us were born. Their reasons are deeply rooted in their religious beliefs. Others seek to join lineage organizations, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of the Confederacy or others. They must "prove" their lineage back to a Revolutionary War soldier, Confederate soldier, etc.

Let me say right up front here that I do not profess to be an expert. Heck, I've only been at this seriously for about a year, dabbling around with it for about the last five.

When I turned to the the first page I was hooked. There, side by side, were photographs of my great grandmother, Mattie Dorman Blake (1859-1942), my great-great grandmother, Delaney Young Blake (1807-1895), and my great-great-great grandmother, Mary Rogers Blake, who died in 1830 (birth date unknown as yet) and is buried in the Blake/Young cemetery in Hall County.

My cousin Kate had traced the Blakes all the way back to Thomas Blake, "A ship owner of considerable wealth," who was paid by the Crown to bring settlers to America. Thomas apparently liked it here because, sometime around 1664, he settled permanently in Isle of Wight County, Va. After four Williams, another Thomas, and an Isaac nearly 200 years later, came Lula Gadsy Blake, my grandmother, who married Luther Clarence Fowler in Cleburne County, Ala. and "begat" my father. By the time I found Dad's name on page 56 of the book, I was a goner hopelessly taken in by the engulfing flames of genealogy.

I began taking casual trips just across the state line to Randolph County, Ala., where my great-great grandfather Thomas settled in the 1830s, (family lore says Thomas traded a rifle to the Indians for land to build his home on) and, along with his son, operated Blake's Ferry on the Tallapoosa River for nearly 65 years.

"Who were these people?" I wondered as I sat among the Fowlers, looking at tombstones and grave markers of people who had lived in the 19th century. I took pictures of the stones and wrote all the information down in a notebook, determined, by now, to seek out the answers to my questions.

Well, I'm here to tell you, a year later I know who each one of those Fowlers is, who they married, who their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are and, for the most part, what they did for a living and where and how they lived. It has not been an easy quest and, even with the Internet, has taken me a year to put William J. Fowler's story together. But I am proud of my accomplishment.

No one else in the Fowler family has ever done a family history book and I hope to be the one to do it. But my work is far from done. Fingers of the Fowler history spread out all over the southeast. I have my work cut out for me.

I have had to study history to find out just where they were at what time and why. Unless you are Native American, your ancestors and relatives had to come from across the sea somewhere, and America was settled from east to west.

As you pursue your family history, you will see them creeping in migrations across the country, across the states, most seeking free or inexpensive land to farm and settle. Census records, taken every 10 years since 1790, help to find where your ancestors were and where they migrated to.

How do you start your family quest? At the beginning now. If your parents, grandparents, or older relatives are still living, you are a step ahead of the game. Interview them for family stories (which may or may not be totally factual, but are fun nevertheless), names, dates, occupations, personalities, any information which will help "flesh out" your family history and breathe life into your ancestors.

Cemeteries, if you know where your ancestors and relatives are buried, will give you birth and death dates and help you place them in a period in history. Keep a notebook with all your information in it. It will soon become your "brain."

I have found most everything I needed at the Troup County Archives in LaGrange and the Coweta Genealogical Library in Grantville much easier trips. If it all sounds dull, let me tell you, I almost had tears in my eyes when I found the will book in Meriwether County where the will of my GGGGgrandfather Robert Boyd was recorded in 1847. That page I was touching was more than 150 years old. I made copies and have distributed them among family members. The handwriting alone is amazing.

If you are online, you have a distinct advantage. The Internet has literally revolutionized genealogy. But, let me raise a red flag of warning right now. Everything you find on the Internet is not necessarily factual. Be careful! Any Tom, Dick or Mary can put information out there. You really don't know if their information is correct or not.

And that brings me to one of the purposes of this column. Families. We want to hear about your south metro families. We want to know who your GGGGgrandparents were, who their children were, where they were, and what they did. How did they get here? You are here. How did YOU get here?

We may help you to find some long-lost cousins. Send us your family history and we'll pass it on to the community. If you have a research tip, share it with us. As I expand my genealogy horizons, I'll share with you my experiences in tracking down my ancestors, both on and off the Internet.

I would love to tie the non-Internet and Internet people together. That is probably the biggest gap in genealogy today. But I have barely scratched the surface here. There is so much more to tell you. We will learn together... and have a lot of fun in the process.