AAAHA! I finally came up with a topic for the Genealogy and Family History Community diary I have to publish today! Ok, just one small problem – there’s no way I have time to research and write it. The topic was going to be causes of mass death – the flu that killed thousands of people in 1918, the various outbreaks of small pox and cholera. It’s always interesting to realize that your ancestor died in a major and well-known plague.
But since it took me so long to come up with a topic, you all will have to just imagine the sheer artistry of the diary that never was, from the thorough research to the brilliant writing.
Due to my procrastination, I’ll take the advice of newdem1960 and write about some serendipity. (There’s some irony there, with me wanting to write one diary while coming up with another; but I’ll think about that later.)
The first accidental discovery occurred . . . (continued below the orange squiggle)
when I dragged my daughter to Georgia to keep me company when I researched what the kids call “Mom’s dead people”. I picked up my aunt, and the three of us went to libraries, attended a descendants’ reunion (from people who descended from a couple who died in the 1870’s), and prowled through cemeteries attached to little white clapboard churches. We were basically in and around Cherokee County.
We found the gravestones of most of the family members I was looking for, and was able to verify death dates, and in several cases, spouses. I also took pictures of the surrounding stones, and by researching some of them, found additional family connections. It was all very absorbing (for me, that is. My daughter will give you a different take on things).
The one frustration I had was trying to find the Keith family cemetery where a particular ancestor was reportedly buried. I called a local funeral director, but he’d never heard of it. I call several people, and even asked a nice policeman who’d lived there for years, with similar poor results. It didn’t seem to exist anymore.
The day we were leaving, we walked from the hotel over to the local Waffle House for breakfast. (We think of Waffle Houses as an interesting tourist attraction, since there aren’t any where I live.) As we walked back, on the other side of the road, my daughter saw a stone pillar, almost covered with kudzu. She said, I wonder what that pillar is for – maybe a big old plantation house. She walked over to it, moved some of the kudzu aside, and there it was. Our cemetery. (Good thing we didn’t have lunch at the Waffle House, or the kudzu would have grown too much to see the pillar!) We climbed over the fence into the cemetery, and found the gravestone – for both Peter and Rachel Cagle, who died in 1842. My aunt says they were calling to us, and my daughter was the only one who was listening.
If we had driven the car instead of walking; if we had ignored the pillar – it was all such a lucky circumstance. Who knows – maybe my aunt is right.
The second serendipitous event was the search for my Gamble ancestors in the northern counties of Alabama. Don’t get me started on the sad fate of having ancestors named Wilson, White, and Sharp. It’s like being cursed by the genealogy gods.
Anyway, I knew my ancestors included the Gamble family, which was one of the earlier settlers of the area around what is now Walker County. Ethnic European settlers increased so much in Alabama after it became a state in 1819 that the counties multiplied like amoebas without birth control. My family there never moved their house – but lived in four different counties.
Looking for them in the hand-written census records was difficult. I went through page after page, looking for them in every county, in each census. At one point, with my back aching from leaning over the keyboard, and my eyes getting dryer and more tired, I was going over yet another page, trying to decipher the writing to see if I could find any relatives. I happened to glance up at the top of the page.
There I found them. There, at the top of the census sheet, in a flowing script, was the signature of the census taker, my ancestor, John R. Gamble. So not only did I find the family, but I found my ggggrandfather’s own signature.
So, fellow family historians, what were your lucky findings? Plus, as always, this is an open thread.