About a decade ago I made the prediction that the big fight for the very soul of Peachtree City would center on the city’s industrially zoned land.

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.

There is something wrong in south Fulton. And it’s not the people.

What you are about to read may well upset a few apple carts, though that is not necessarily the intention. My allegiance is to the residents of south Fulton, the diamond of metro Atlanta, not to any party or its representatives. And what follows is the beginning, not the end.

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 ...

Consider this a “letter to our readers.”

I’d like to invite you inside for for some shop-talk.

You probably by now have heard or read that our big city brethren, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, have “retrenched.” “AJC moves forward,” is the best-face headline the publisher put on his letter to the readers.

There is a song called “Life Is A Highway.” It was originally recorded by Tom Cochrane of Red Rider and then remade by Rascal Flatts and put on the soundtrack for the movie “Cars,” which I have watched umpteen times since giving it to my son for Christmas, but that is another story.

The vote by Fairburn City Council Monday night to approve the renewal of the lease of the old courthouse to the Old Campbell County Historical Society came on the heels of controversy in November and again this month. The issue centered primarily on the presence of various Confederate materials on display in the building and the appropriateness of those materials in today’s local culture.

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.

Scene: The White House, with a white picket fence around it and a tire swing in the front yard. Daddy is sitting at the table enjoying a lemonade while he listens to the ball game on the radio.

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.

There is still talk these days about forming, actually re-forming, a “new” Milton County out of the land mass in north Fulton. Not so curiously, there is less conversation about re-forming a “new” county out of the existing south Fulton. Though currently backing off on the time table, north Fulton legislators will certainly push hard for this concept to eventually be put in the hands of voters who will quite likely pass the measure. Georgia saw the desires of the people come through crystal clear after the “evil” Republicans paved the way for voters to create the cities of Sandy Springs, Milton and John’s Creek and what may later become the City of Dunwoody.

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.

Recapping our story, Robert H. Boyd, son of Hugh and Jennett Boyd, grew up in Newberry County, S.C. and married Chloeretta D. Gray, probably in Abbeville, in 1815, as that's where Chloeretta's father moved his family after his second marriage. Robert and Chloeretta are found in the 1820 and 1830 Abbeville Dist., S.C., census in the same neighborhood as Chloeretta's father, Fredrick Gray, and some of her brothers.

If you have ever read my movie reviews, you know I am a fan of horror movies. I even put one of them, “Slither,” on my list of top 10 films of 2006. I started 2007 the way I ended 2006, by watching a movie, and I can honestly say that the most recent film I watched was one of the scariest I had seen in awhile.

I debated a long time before I came up with this topic and it may take more than one column to do it justice. It has many facets and it is tied into the two previous topics. The research involves stumbling over a marriage contract hidden within a deed. It also involves a dispute in probate and changing the reporting of annual returns from one county (Meriwether) to another (Pike) simply because the administrator lived in Pike and it was easier for her to settle the estate there. There are missing children, mystery wives, and an unknown burial site - all kinds of questions surrounding this family. Perhaps that is why it is so fascinating and why I can't let it go.

I can hardly believe I’m starting my eighth year as religion editor and, in May, will go into my 15th year with The Citizen. Some of you may know that I spent the years 1993 to 1999 as a graphic artist here designing ads. Before that, dating back to 1982, I worked for three other newspapers in Fayette County — the now defunct Fayette Sun and the old Fayette County News and This Week in Peachtree City. This religion editor position was supposed to be temporary as I “phased” into retirement in the fall of 1999. But plans do change and I’m still here. I’ve even added the weekly genealogy column to my duties. Retirement seems to have faded into the sunset.

A few months ago, someone asked me to do a column about estates and appraisals since she " ... just didn't understand it at all." No problem. No one really understands it until they have experienced it first hand. Since this sort of ties in with last week's column on treasures in the court books, I thought it appropriate to continue on the same subject.

It’s a good thing this happened last week and I’m writing about it this week. I was so mad then I could hardly utter a word about it without using unladylike language. I’m still mad but a little more rational. And not as mad about “what” was done as “how” it was done.

I can't praise strongly enough the benefits of researching directly in the old books in the courthouse. The first time I touched a book whose writings were done in the very early 1800s I was awestruck. I thought about the clerk who had sat for hours carefully penning what would later become history books for the counties and the courts. I ran my fingers gently over the now-faded-to-brown words, almost afraid they would fade more and disappear before my very eyes. Even the phrasing and grammar tended to make you feel you were in another place and time.

Last week a certain local publication suggested that Tyrone’s first ever nighttime Christmas parade could very well become the biggest parade in the South, rivaling those seen on television even.

There haven't been any outstanding new developments on the situation with possibly bringing Haywood Thornton, a Confederate soldier, home to Georgia from Illinois, but I have received two e-mails representing opinions from three people.

I wanted to follow up on the situation of bringing Haywood Thornton home from the Rock Island Cemetery in Illinois and give you another contact in case you are a descendant and want to get involved. The wheels are definitely turning on this project but they are turning very slowly. It may be a year or more before it is completed.

As a parent, I have left many of my old haunts behind and picked up a new set of stomping grounds. Gone are the days when I could pop in to a bookstore for a long, leisurely browse and maybe enjoy one of those phenomenal gingerbread lattes at Starbucks.

We’re going to leave the Byrams and Tidwells temporarily and move southeast from Fairburn into northern Fayette County. Heading toward Fayetteville on what is now Ga. Highway 92, we find the Hopeful Community and the home of the Thornton family of the early 1800s.

This little gal has really had me stumped for a long time. With John Byram’s book, “Byrams in America” open beside my computer night and day, I have been sitting here looking at her name at the top of his list of children for weeks and weeks, wondering where in the world she fit in and if, indeed, she was a child of James and Hannah Byram. After all, John also listed Turner Byram as a child of James and Hannah and I’m certain he was not. I have some interesting observations about Turner Byram and his Coweta connections which I will save for another day.