This month, I’m voting for Republican Emory Wilkerson for the Fayette County Commission Post 1.

I’ve endorsed Emory Wilkerson before, when he ran for the Georgia Legislature.

In a little over seven years of reporting the news, I have regularly covered hundreds of public meetings. Very rarely have I seen occasions where elected representatives of the people openly violated Georgia law, whether in letter or spirit.

When I started this Jones surname research, I had no idea I was opening up a real can of worms. I guess with a name like “Jones,” many conflicts should be expected. After researching the Internet using official records as well as family trees composed by others, I have come to the conclusion that this family is a real mess.

The five Peachtree City Council members might be wondering what is the big deal about Peachtree City approving extension of city sewer lines to developments outside the city limits.

I had intended to wrap up Mary Amelia Jones’ family this week but two things popped up which require dealing with before we go any farther.

We all know that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then, stating, “I cannot tell a lie,” admitted to his father, or some authority figure, that he had in fact, chopped it down.

The Jones line in America, that behind Milly Tidwell Boyd (of Fayette County) through her mother, Mary Amelia Jones Tidwell (of Meriwether and Coweta counties), started in Virginia in the late 1600s, as descendants of Captain Richard Jones and his first wife, Amy Batte.

Valentine’s Day was yesterday, so I hope that everyone was nice to their sweetie. If you weren’t I’m sure you are hearing about it today.

I thought residents all over South Fulton might want to learn about one of the features of our Web site that you may not be familiar with. It is one that is designed to guarantee that you have a voice, that your voice will be heard and one by which you can exchange ideas and discuss issues affecting you communities among yourselves.

I don’t know whether anyone’s ever stopped long enough to think about it, but we genealogists tend to be a bit sexist. We go flying off into the wild blue yonder tracking our male ancestors, but when it comes to the females, we try to find their maiden names and, that done, we just sort of leave them dangling there, hanging off an outside branch of the family tree ... petticoats fluttering in the breeze.

Peachtree City is reeling from two teen suicides in the past two weeks. The big question is: what are we going to do about it?

Members of the Georgia General Assembly have introduced the “Stand Your Ground” bill, a bill that would allow gun-owning citizens to shoot and kill if they feel threatened.

Unincorporated South Fulton County is edging closer and closer to the threshold of its future. The question is, what will that future be?

As related last week, the Westmorelands were among the earliest settlers of the Fayette County area, arriving in the 1820s and settling near what is now County Line Christian Church.

Most of us are taught to tell the truth at a very young age. Unfortunately, the lesson doesn’t stick until much later, if ever.

Continuing with our series on the Tidwell family of Fayette, this week we add the collateral family of Westmoreland, descendants of William Westmoreland of Virginia. Much of the information in this series was taken from the book, “McCall-Tidwell and Allied Families,” written by Ettie Tidwell McCall of Atlanta in 1931. Several members of the Westmoreland family married Tidwells.

Opinions about local stuff, not necessarily in order of importance:

Sheriff versus County Commission chairman on accounting for federally-dispensed drug forfeiture money: Gentlemen, gentlemen, please.

Recently, courts were back in the news.

No, it wasn’t a case of “activist judges” legislating their beliefs over the beliefs of others. In fact, the courts were absolutely in the right in their decisions, as far as I could see in the details that were included in the two news stories. The real stories were either the cases themselves or what happened after the decision was handed down.

There were several marriages between the Tidwell and Westmoreland families but we’ll only discuss one this week; the marriage of William de Graffenried Tidwell to Angelina Westmoreland. Much of the information on this family is taken from the book, “McCall-Tidwell and Allied Families” written by Ettie Tidwell McCall of Atlanta in 1931. William de Graffenried Tidwell was Mrs. McCall’s grandfather.

This column takes place between the hours of 1 and 2 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13.

Cue the flashing numbers and the “beep, beep, beep” sound effects.

Last week we left off with the children of William Tidwell who married Mary Amelia Jones and came to the Coweta-Meriwether area. This week we’ll discuss his brother, Benjamin, from whom he was never separated after the two were orphaned in 1783. Much of the information on this family is taken from the book, “McCall-Tidwell and Allied Families” written by Ettie Tidwell McCall of Atlanta in 1931. Some is from my own research.

Come closer and gather around my crystal ball. Pay no attention to that orange, clearance price tag on the base or that smudge around the top. I was eating Cool Ranch Doritos earlier.

Continuing with the story of the descendants of John Tidwell of Virginia, we pick up this week with his grandson, William Tidwell, son of John (Jr.), who moved to Craven County, S.C. with his parents in 1772. William was born about 1765 in Westmoreland County, Va.

Happy aught-six!

With the turning of the calendar come an appraisal of things past and a contemplation of things future.

This week we’ll launch the series of southside families from the book, “McCall, Tidwell and Allied Families,” written by Ettie Tidwell McCall in 1931. Descendants of this Tidwell family married into many, many families in Fayette, Coweta, Campbell, Meriwether, Pike and other Atlanta metro counties. The more families I read about, the more amazed I became at the number of people (surnames) who are descended from this family.

Quite by accident, I stumbled across an old book online and opened a whole lot of doors to Southside families.

I had run into a dead end on one of my lines and decided to take a different tack and head in another direction. Since the Tidwells married not only into the Boyd family of Bethany, but also into my Robert Boyd’s family, on a whim, I did a search for Tidwells at Ancestry. Up popped this terrific little book (360-plus pages) which has a number of family surnames very familiar to Fayette, Coweta, Campbell, Carroll, Pike, and Meriwether county researchers.

The whole trip was only supposed to take five minutes, 10 minutes tops.

All he had to do was drive to the grocery store and pick a few items off of the list; egg nog, brown sugar, cranberry sauce and some cinnamon.

I found another little genealogy treasure at the Hogansville auction last month. It’s a book on the life and times of the Rev. Dr. James Clyde Adams, a Methodist minister who served his last years in Heard county and contributed many wonderful things to the development and progress of that county beginning in the 1930s.

A member of my family reaches a significant milestone this week and I couldn’t be more proud.

My sister, Katie, will graduate from nursing school this week, and to say that it has been a long journey to get to this point would be a major understatement.

More than 1,000 people showed up last Thursday at the Georgia International Convention Center to learn more about the issues currently impacting the future of South Fulton County. Front and center in the presentation was the idea that the time has come for something different, something that is needful, something that meets the current and future needs of the unincorporated areas of South Fulton. Unless, of course, those in the unincorporated areas would rather be slowly annexed by the City of Atlanta and the cities in South Fulton: something that is guaranteed to happen.