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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t know how she found it, but Sarah Sullivan found and responded to a wonderful story we did in September of 2004 on the Price family of Deerfield, Conn., whose descendants ended up here in Fayette and Coweta counties. The story was submitted by Ken Arnold who has been a regular contributor to our genealogy section over the years.

We’re picking up this week with the continuation of the Stamps family of Coweta, submitted by Carol K. Garrett of Chamblee several months ago (sorry ‘bout the delay). Carol’s letter was in response to my column of several years ago on the Stamps family of early Georgia, which I tentatively was connecting to my Noel Johnson and Tempy Stamps in Oglethorpe. Noel and Tempy are said to have moved to Tennessee and lived near the Johnson family which was connected to that of President Andrew Johnson. The families are said to be related, although, for the life of me I can’t make a firm link.

I’m going to have to make a serious apology. Late last spring/early summer, when I was totally caught up in the families at Bethany, I received an e-mail from Carol Garrett of Chamblee who responded to a column I did last year on the Stamps and Johnson families. I had to put a lot of letters on hold back then so as not to break the flow of the stories.

Before you start getting all excited at the names in the title, I should advise you that I have found no connection of these families to the Harps and Norrises in Fayette (except for one teeny tiny clue), although the author of the letter I received does live in Fayetteville.

I received an e-mail recently from Fran Gillich, who believes she is connected to the Bennetts of Fayette County. However, proof of the connection has eluded her for years.

This week I’ll give you a little more on the third family mentioned by Tim Turner in his letter a few weeks ago, and that is another family of Boyds who ended up in our area. As far as I can determine, these Boyds are not related to the Boyds at Bethany or the Boyds of Meriwether and Cleburne (Ala.)

We’ll wrap up the Holley family this week with an e-mail I received from Tom McBryde of Austin, Texas, another Holley descendant. Tom’s information indicates that John Holley’s father was William Holley, as Johnnye Moore Clements was trying to prove several years ago.

I always love receiving letters and e-mails in response to the columns, especially when you send me more family information to add to the growing number of surnames we have already covered. One of the purposes of the column is to hopefully connect those who do not have computers and read the hard copy version (newspapers distributed around Atlanta's Southside) with those who read the column on the Internet. This is a gap that desperately needs to be bridged.