History and genealogy go hand in hand

It never dawned on me when I leaped (blissfully and ignorantly) headfirst into this still-relatively-new, fascinating hobby of mine, that I would be forced to learn history (and a lot of it) in order to do my genealogy efficiently. As I have said before, history was not my best subject in high school or college. In fact, next to chemistry, it was probably my worst.

As I got deeper and deeper into my genealogy searches, it soon became painfully apparent that I was sorely lacking in this department. Not only did I know nothing about our neighboring state, Alabama, where all my father's roots were, but I knew next to nothing about the history of my own home state of Georgia, where I was born, raised, lived and will probably die.

I have never been a "clean-the-house-on-the-surface" person. No ... I have to be thorough and do it from scratch to finish. And so it became with my genealogy. I had to learn the history of the areas I was researching in order to find my folks.

Oh, yeah, you lazy people out there can find a book, find a family tree, quickly add a branch and fly on to the next family. But, not me. I gotta do it right. I want to know not only where my family lived, but also what the living conditions were when they were there.

But I am lucky. I live in the Internet age. Historical information is at my fingertips with just a stroke of the keyboard. I have probably learned more about the history of the United States in the past few years than I ever would have learned had I not gotten into genealogy. And it is fascinating!

A note came over one of the Roots-L lists the other day from someone saying they just KNEW their folks were in Cleburne County, Alabama, but the census said they were in Benton County (which doesn't exist any more). "What was going on?" they asked.

Well, heck. I knew the answer to that one. Benton County was the original name of Calhoun County (now the Anniston area) but the name was changed in 1858. Then, a part of Calhoun County was taken to form Cleburne County in 1866. You had to know this or you would never find your family.

Another time county histories helped me was when I was trying to find the land my GGGGgrandfather Boyd owned in Meriwether County. His will gave the district and land lot numbers and added, " ... formerly Troup, now Meriwether ..." Well shoot. That should have been a piece of cake. The road from Luthersville (in Meriwether) goes straight to Hogansville (in Troup County). It must be in that area where the counties join, right?

Wrong! Before Meriwether was formed, Troup went all the way over to the Pike County line. And, sure enough, that's where I found Land Lot 269, in the "upper" ninth district. The strange thing is, and an odd coincidence, is that where his land once was is only 4.1 miles from my sister's present residence in Hollonville, which is in Pike County. You never know, do you?

Now I find myself moving one branch of my family tree back out of Georgia into Tennessee. I'm having to start from scratch and learn the history of county formations in Tennessee or I'll never be able to place them in the correct location or find the family records. It takes time to do it right, but it is fun learning.

In doing all this, I have amassed quite a number of Web sites which display maps of various areas and show how this great nation of ours was settled. I thought I'd share some of them with you in hopes that they may aid you in your search for your ancestors.

The most fascinating one is the animated map showing Georgia from 1758 to 1832. The counties are formed right before your very eyes. I believe there are maps on the main site for other states, since I have also found an animated map for Tennessee. The map for Georgia is here: http://www.segenealogy.com/georgia/ga_map.htm.

Another informative map shows the settlement of the United States from 1800 to 1820: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/exploration_1800.jpg. This one takes a while to download but is worth the wait. It has the routes of major explorers and also shows the area that was totally settled by 1820.

Did you know that Georgia once claimed land all the way to the Mississippi River? Go here and see our (once) huge state: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/united_states_1783_1803.jpg.

Another one I have found to be handy is the site showing Georgia counties as they were in 1895: http://www.livgenmi.com/gacounty.htm. This one has some communities which don't exist any more. I printed out each map that showed locations of my ancestors. A real eye-opener.

This next site is amazing. It even has links to military campaign maps during the Civil War: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/histus.html.

And, of course, there is also good old Georgia GenWeb which has a table of counties, tells how and when they were formed, and also has links to the county Web sites which usually have a brief county history: http://www.rootsweb.com/~gagenweb/. You can't beat this one for a starting point.

If you have trouble copying these links from the paper or from our Web site, e-mail me privately and I'll send you my list.

Y'all have fun. I sure did!

I'm still looking for stories about your Georgia ancestors who lived in the Atlanta metro area. Send them to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; E-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!