As Anne Westbrook wrote last week, Harrison Jones was captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Md., but was later released at the end of the war. He returned to Fayette County and, in 1867, received land from his father. We pick up the story there. Anne writes:

We continue this week with the story of one of the many Jones families in Fayette County, that of Jesse Jones and his children. Anne Westbrook is a descendant of this family and has generously shared her research with us. It is hoped that someone out there may see something familiar and make a connection, helping to separate this common surname into family groups.

Several months ago, Anne Westbrook wrote me and asked if I'd be interested in doing a series of articles on the Jones families in Fayette and surrounding areas. Since Jones is one of the more difficult families to keep track of, I gratefully accepted her offer. Anne has done a lot of research and gives her sources plainly in her articles. The stories appearing the next few weeks were written entirely by her. She begins with Robert Jones of Clarke County.

We're going to wrap up the Grays this week with the final installment of Carol Hoyt's beautifully written story about her own branch of the Gray family. Carol writes:

We continue this week with the story of the Gray family of the Line Creek area, written and submitted by Carol Hoyt of Kansas. Carol had said that Abraham and his wife had several children but we have information on only three, Nancy, Benjamin and Hosea. Carol's story continues:

When I was doing the stories on the Line Creek families over the past few weeks, I received an email from Carol Hoyt who lives in Kansas. Carol had been reading the stories on the Internet and said that she was from another Line Creek family - the Grays. Well, the Grays were no strangers to me. It seemed that everywhere I went searching for information on those four Line Creek families, I stumbled across a Gray who married into one.

I'm going to try and wrap up this Kempson family this week with, hopefully, some info many didn't have. It is always helpful to know what court documents exist on a particular family and that's what I've been doing - checking with the courts in Coweta and Meriwether to see which Kempsons left a will or whose estate was administered here, and, if land was purchased, where it was located. Last week I checked Meriwether and this week Coweta.

I was mildly surprised that this family, which had lots of children and married into many of the well-known families in Coweta and Meriwether, was not well represented in either the local history books or online. These Kempsons were the descendants of Harmon Kempson, a German immigrant who made his way from Hanover, Germany to South Carolina, and later to Meriwether County, Georgia and left many to carry on his name. His children were Henry, Elizabeth, Peter John Michael, Frederick Harmon, Benjamin and Susannah.

This week we continue with Robin Parker's story of the children of David and Nancy Leitner Gable. Robin names the children in order and writes of them:

“(1) Noah Gable married Sallie A. Wilson in 1858 and they had 10 children. In 1859, Noah purchased the medical practice of Dr. N.B. Drewry in Brooks and, for the next 72 years, Noah and two of his sons practiced medicine there. Noah enlisted in the CSA and was captured and held POW at Camp Douglas in Illinois. Since he was a physician, his services were greatly needed. At the end of the war, Noah had to walk the long distance from Illinois back to his home in Brooks. Noah was the grandfather of Miss Nina Gable, who was a well-known personality in the Brooks community.

Moving on to the next family in the newspaper article of 1907 about the "fruitful" families of Line Creek, we come to the family of George Washington Gable, to whom Robin Parker, author of the two previous articles, also is related. From 1907: " ... These three families (Hutchinson, Thompson, Kempson) live on adjoining plantations and are in sight of each other. Within sight of these three mentioned is the family of our late worthy County Treasurer George W. Gable, deceased, which is composed of ten children and the widowed mother. All of the children are at home with the mother. Thus the four families are 46 children all living within a mile of each other ... "

We continue this week with the wonderful story on the Jack Thompson family written and submitted by Robin Parker of Warm Springs. This family was mentioned in a 1907 newspaper article in the Newnan paper, along with the Gables, the Kempsons and the Hutchinsons, as having a very large family and living within a mile of each other on the Coweta-Meriwether line. In this area, Line Creek flows from Fayette to Coweta into Meriwether, separating Coweta from Spalding and Meriwether from Pike. Just a little farther south, Line Creek flows into the Flint River. I have written about many families living in this area (and would love to hear more about them from you).

The ink had hardly dried on the paper last week when I received an e-mail from Robin Parker of Warm Springs who is descended from two of our Line Creek families. Her aunt who lives in Peachtree City had clipped out the column and sent it to her. Needless to say I was thrilled to hear from someone who could tell us a little more, and on a more personal level, about the lives of these people. Robin agreed to share some information on her families and will be writing most of the material for the columns for the next few weeks. Robin writes:

I've been sitting here wrestling with myself for the past week, trying to decide which family to do first (of those discussed in last week's article). I fully intended to do the Kempsons but something just didn't "feel" right. I went over the material again and finally realized what it was. I was trying to write about the wrong Benjamin Kempson! What a disaster that would have been! Let me explain.

Once again we're transitioning out of one family into connecting lines, going from the Herndons into the Kempsons, Hutchinsons, Thompsons and Gables. As you remember, two Herndon brothers married two Kempson sisters and both sisters just happen to belong to one of the families we will study in more detail later.

I'm going to wrap up the Herndon family this week with short stories about the three youngest children of Edward and Nancy Brown Herndon: James, Cora and Walter. Cora and Walter were little more than toddlers when their father died early in 1855 and their mother passed away in December of the same year. James was a young teen. All three had their inheritance put under the watchful eye of a guardian, with Walter Pope taking care of the financial affairs of all three children.

We will continue this week with the children of Edward and Nancy Brown Herndon of Elbert and Meriwether counties, and focus once more on the family of Preston and Ann Amis Herndon. We started this story two weeks ago with the three young children of this couple who died tragically when they were barely able to toddle. This week we continue with more of Preston and Ann's children who lived to adulthood, married and had children of their own.

I'm going to move off the topic of the Herndons this week to bring you some very sad news and spread a few flowers where they so deservedly belong.

The genealogy and history community lost two of its brightest stars this week with the passing of Norma Gunby on Saturday, April 14, and Willis (Bill) Nolen on Monday, April 16. Norma was a shining star in the genealogy community and Bill's bright rays shone down on the tight-knit community of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A Luthersville resident formerly from East Point, Bill had been a Confederate history buff since his childhood.

I spent a delightful day with Nell O'Shields last Wednesday, going over her collection of Herndon information and photos - what treasures she has! However, when we put our information together, we came across several questions which are going to take some time to figure out.

This will probably be a series in several parts since I have so much information on Preston and Nell O'Shields has shared so much of his story not found in the record books. There are still a few questions which I need to pursue through those records, but there is still plenty to tell before we get there.

Once again, I regret that I have to start off with corrections but the sharp eyes of Valerie Freeman in California caught at least two from last week's column. And I have two questions, myself, which I hope someone can answer. There also is a little more on Joel's estate I'd like to share, so we'll use this week to tie up some loose ends.

The third son of Edward and Nancy Brown Herndon was Joel Jasper Herndon, born 18 Oct 1829 in Elbert County, Ga. Joel is the only child of Edward and Nancy to have a biography included in "Georgia Memoirs," a book published in 1895. I ran an excerpt from the Memoirs story in an earlier column as it gave much of Joel's life history and some of his heritage. The book may be found at the Coweta Genealogy Library in Grantville as well as at the Georgia Archives. I found one conflict in that Joel's marriage date in the story disagreed with the marriage date in the original marriage book in Meriwether County.

I was finally able to get down to the Coweta Superior Court to check out land records and was quite surprised at the number of transactions by Herndons. Although there were no very early transactions as there were in Meriwether, I found an impressive number of them in the mid 1800s and early 1900s. I also found two Herndons unknown to me in very early land transactions - Jeremiah Herndon (land in the 2nd District filed 1828) and John P. Herndon (land in the 6th District filed 1864). Don't have a clue as to who those guys might be.

I keep driving back and forth between Newnan and Greenville, trying to gather as many court records as possible on the family of Edward and Nancy Brown Herndon. They lived predominantly in one area but that area straddled two counties. Later, Preston branched out on his own and moved way out towards Powers Crossroads near the Heard County line. But, for the most part, the Herndons spread out in an area roughly between Senoia and Haralson in Coweta and Alvaton in Meriwether.

We are very fortunate to have many records to document the births and, in some cases, deaths, of members of this family. Since Edward's great-great granddaughter, Nell O'Shields, persevered and tracked down her great-grandfather's Bible (Preston Herndon) and put it together with handwritten notes left behind by her grandmother, Ethel Ona Herndon Gullatt, we can be reasonably certain that these dates are correct.

I hate to start off with corrections but I made some mistakes in last week's column which need attending to. Given the speed with which today's information is disseminated, those errors could be repeated hundreds of times in just one day. If you don't correct mistakes as soon as they happen the errors will spiral out of control. Genealogical errors are nearly impossible to correct once they get rolling. So, here we go ...

We're sort of sliding out of one family into another, going from the Boyds to the Herndons, which connect through McDuffie Boyd and his wife, Amanda Herndon Brooks Boyd. Amanda was the daughter of Edward Herndon and Nancy Brown whose descendants scattered throughout the south metro area and lived in Fayette, Coweta, Spalding, Meriwether, Troup and Campbell (now South Fulton) counties. The early history of this family as it arrived in Virginia appears to be strongly disputed by Herndon researchers and I will leave it to them to settle their differences. We will concern ourselves only with the Herndons in Georgia. Amanda's obituary tells quite a bit of Georgia Herndon history.

I'm going to close out this family series with the story of McDuffie C. Boyd who was called "Mack." I've saved McDuffie 'til last because it gives me a nice transition into the next series I want to do, that of the Herndon family (McDuffie's wife). Later, we'll feature the Kempson family and their relationship with several other families in Coweta's first district. We'll even touch again on that old rascal, Wilkins Stone. You will find these families spilling over into south Fayette, western Spalding, and northern Pike and Meriwether counties. How they intermingle is fascinating.

Continuing our series on the family of Robert H. and Chloeretta Gray Boyd, from Bible records, we find that their third child was William H.B. Boyd. I have no idea what the "H.B." stands for. William's grandfather was named Hugh Boyd but I don't think they'd name a child William Hugh Boyd Boyd. William's younger brother had a child named William Henry and that may be another possibility.

I've had an awful time trying to track these children, even though there were only four living after 1850. The only two I could really do anything with were Julia and McDuffie, but even they were hard to find. I'm going to take one at a time, based on the Bible records, and tell you everything I know in detail. I have been hoping that sooner or later a descendant would see this information and step forward to share so my stories could be completed. However, it appears that either all the children have died out, or no one from this line is doing genealogy. With the exception of the one descendant of McDuffie Boyd who sent me the Bible records, no one has said a word.

We all know that when your story doesn't quite fit right there's usually a flaw in your research. I had struggled over this part of Robert Boyd's story for at least five years, juggling, moving the pieces, going over the records again and again until I had almost memorized parts of them, and Robert's story still wouldn't fit together right. His marriage to Martha Wagner, the two children she brought with her to the marriage, their marriage contract, her death and estate with no mention of Robert ... none of it jelled. Well, earlier this week I found out what was missing - the Wagners, Emfingers and Webbs. And I found them right under my nose.