SideLine: Robert D. White

Robert D White, ca. 1935

In genealogy, a collateral ancestor is the brother or sister of your direct ancestor and a collateral line is his or her descendents.  Researching your collateral ancestors can often lead you to details about your own ancestors that you might not otherwise discover.  In addition, adding their stories to your research makes for a fuller telling of your family history.  Plus sometimes they are just so darned interesting!  I can sometimes get distracted for days reading about a collateral ancestor such as the Rev. Dr. Henry Holcombe, a great Baptist preacher of the first decades of the 19^th century in Savannah and Philadelphia who was my 4th great grand uncle.  Another great reason for taking a detour into your collateral lines is to find distant cousins who can hopefully help you when you hit one of those pesky brick walls.  I have such a brick wall, so I’ll take a break from the Farthings here to talk about the family of I.C. Farthing’s wife, Mamie.

 
Mamie Clyde White (1884-1957) – “Mamaw” – was my maternal great grandmother, my mother’s mother’s mother.  She died about four months before I was born.  Based on what my mother told me, I was searching for Mamie’s parents Robert Alfred White and Elizabeth Rozier.  Except I was also told that Mamie’s mother had died when she was a little girl, and that her father had remarried, to a woman name Valeria.  Oh, and Mamie had one brother, also named Robert.  My mother doesn’t recall ever meeting Mamie’s father or stepmother, but “Uncle Robert” visited a couple of times.  We actually found a picture of him with my grandmother and grandfather and my mother, which was probably taken in 1935.  (We don’t know who cut the picture or when, but we do have both pieces!)

I started my search in the Ancestry.com Census indexes for 1900.  This is a rather targeted way to search, but since I knew that Mamie was born in the 1880’s and there aren’t any surviving records for the 1890 census in Georgia I was hopeful that I would find her family in 1900.  I also had already located the record of her marriage to I. C. Farthing in 1907 in the digitized microfilm of the Laurens County Marriage Book N on the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website.  So I focused the search even further to Laurens and surrounding counties in Georgia.  And I was successful.  I found a family of four listed in Dodge County, Chauncey District consisting of Robert A White (age 39), Valeria White (22), Robert A White (17) and Mamie White (15).  The 1900 census is valuable for the additional information it contains.  For example, it gives the month and year of birth as well as the age for each individual, the number of years married for couples and the number of children born/still living for the wives.  Robert A and Valeria have only been married 7 years, so it’s obvious she couldn’t be Robert D and Mamie’s mother.  And she’s only 22, so she’s more a big sister than a mother.  No wonder I heard a couple of stories that Mamie didn’t particularly care for her step-mother.  Of course, you can’t always depend on the dates or ages reported on the census, or the other information without corroboration.  For example, Valeria supposedly has had 2 children and 2 are living, but none are in the house of an appropriate age.  Did the census taker just put her down as the mother without asking any other questions?  We’ll never know.  The census form also indicates that Robert A was a teamster, and his son Robert D was already a laborer in a saw mill at 17 years old.

And that’s about it for Robert A White, my great-great grandfather.  The 1900 census indicates he was born in October 1860, so there’s no chance of finding him in the 1860 census, but I’ve also been unable to locate him with certainty in the 1870 or 1880 censuses.  My mother had written down Mamie’s mother’s name as Elizabeth Rozier, so I went to the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website again, searching for two marriage records for Robert A, again focusing on Laurens County first.  I rather quickly located a marriage license issued to Mr. Robert White and Miss Valeria Warren, married in Laurens County on 19 February 1894, so the 1900 census was wrong; they had just celebrated their sixth anniversary, not their seventh.  Finding the record of his first marriage was a bit more difficult.  I wasn’t even sure of the year.  Looking at the 1900 census again, it says that Robert D was born in May 1883 and Mamie was born in October 1884.  I started with January 1883 and started working my way backwards.  I found a record for a Mr. Robert A. White who was married in Laurens County on 18 July 1880, but his wife is listed as Leona Rozar.  So far I’ve had no luck tracing any of these three people back before their marriage licenses, or forward past 1900, with one exception.

1910 US Census, Georgia, Laurens County, Dublin, Ward 3 (courtesy of Amazon.com)

In the 1910 census for Dublin, Laurens County, I found a family of four again.  This time they were listed as Robert D White (Head; 28), Lula E White (Wife; 27), Vida Pearl White (Daughter; 2) and Robert A White (Father; 51).  Now the ages of the two Roberts are one year older than I would expect to see based on their ages an years of birth in 1900, that isn’t unheard of.  This census uses M1, M2, etc. to indicate how many marriages a person has had.  Robert A has M2, indicating two marriages.  It doesn’t indicate he’s widowed, but it does say 12 years for the length of marriage.  Again, an understandable error, particularly if this is a transcribed copy of the enumerator’s actual form … heck sometimes I mix up my own 2’s and 7’s!   I can’t find a “suitable” Robert A White in any succeeding census, but Robert D shows up in 1920, still living in Dublin, Laurens County with his family: Robert D White (38), Lula C White (37) and Veda P White (11).  And in 1930, once again in Dublin, it’s Robert D White (48), Lula White (48) and Pearle White (20).  The 1910 census said that Robert D & Lula had been married 5 years, but the 1930 census says that they have been married 22 years.  More transcription errors?  A search of the Virtual Vault turned up a marriage license issued by Laurens County to Robert White and Lula Gay indicating they were married on 2 October 1904, so 5 years as of the date of the 1910 census would be correct, and the 1930 census should have recorded it as 25 years.

That’s assuming these are the correct people, of course.  My mother didn’t think “Uncle Robert” had ever been married.  I haven’t located death records or gravestones for any of these people.  I can’t find a marriage record for a Vida Pearl White in the vicinity of Dublin or the neighboring counties.  In this case collateral research has not paid off entirely, though it has given me some interesting leads and raised other questions.  For example, whatever happened to Valeria (the second wife)?  Did Robert A die between 1910 and 1920?  Georgia hadn’t yet mandated death certificates, so there doesn’t appear to be any hope of one of those.  Who were Robert A’s parents?  Who was Elizabeth/Leona Rozar/Rozier?  There are quite a few Rozars in and around Laurens county, but I haven’t found a likely candidate for her in the 1870 or 1880 census.  What happened to the daughter, Vida Pearl?  Did she ever marry and have children?  Did any of the possible children inherit family memorabilia that might shed more light on the Whites of Laurens and surrounding counties?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Sorry to say, I’m leaving this detour with more questions than answers, but it was interesting nonetheless, and I did learn a few things which point to other possibilities.  Hopefully more information will come to light some day soon that will allow me to break through this wall.

* Marriage license images are from the Georgia's Virtual Vault website, courtesy of the Georgia Archives.

Here’s your summary:

• Exploring your collateral ancestors and their descendents can often be a rewarding effort.  Sometimes you will even acquire information that will help you break through brick walls on your other lines.
• Census forms, particularly from the decades surrounding the turn of the last century, are often rich in details which can add to the texture of your family history.
• Don’t forget to try to confirm facts with multiple sources.  Tombstones, marriage records, death records, family Bibles, census forms and family histories should all be weighed and considered carefully.  No single document can provide all the evidence you need, but each is a piece of the puzzle.

 Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

Keeping Up With the Joneses IV

Mathew, Pete & Emily Jones

I think that my Jones ancestry is pretty solid from my grandfather James Dewey Jones to his parents Jacob Jones (1866-1951) and Nancy Rosanna “Rosa” Barnes (1872-1948), and to Jacob’s parents Mathew Jones and Emily Nevil Jones (the Nevil name is variously spelled Nevil, Nevils, Neville, Nevilles, and others).  I got distracted by the serendipitous discovery, made while preparing my last post, of additional documentation to support the Mathew/Emma to Jacob connection, so I didn’t even mention Mathew & Emily’s marriage record I found at the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website.  There is a lot of bleed-through on this page of the marriage book, but I enhanced it a bit, and it legible enough to make out that they were married in Bulloch Count on 7 June 1860 by John G Williams M.G. (Minister of the Gospel).  A quick Google search confirms that Williams was an early pastor of the Upper Black Creek [Primitive Baptist] Church.

Mathew Jones & Emily Nevil marriage record

The only confirmed census records for Mathew Jones I have so far are 1900, 1880 and 1870.  I also have Matthew & Emily’s gravestones and Emily’s  Widow’s Indigent Pension application from 1906.  These are often called Confederate soldier's widow's pensions.  The last two are in agreement that Mathew died 21 September 1904, and that Emily was born 21 September 1839 (yes, sadly, her husband died on her 65^th birthday), and her tombstone gives her date of death as 27 November 1910.  But when was Mathew born?  Mathew’s tombstone says 16 May 1833.  Emily states on her Pension application that it was 16 May 1834, in Liberty County, Georgia.  The 1870 census says he was 35 and the 1880 census says he was 45, both of which allow us to calculate his year of birth as 1835.  However, the 1900 census, which asked the month and year of birth in addition to the age, records that he was born in May 1833 and was 67 at the time.  So far I’ve had no luck finding him in the 1850 or 1860 census, and prior to 1850 the census didn’t list the names of all members of the household, so the year of birth remains inconclusive.  Then there is the matter of his parents.  On that both my cousin and I were stuck for a while.

Then I came across a posting from 2001 on the Jones mailing list archive (JONES-L Archives) on Rootweb.  In the opening sentences is states:

I found this in the Atlanta Archives. Hope it helps someone, I copied it verbatim:
Nancy Hendricks b. 2-17-1820 d 8-8-1907 married William M. Jones b 11-24-1813 d 8-25-1877
Their children:
Mathew E. "Mack" Jones b 1835 married in 6-7-1860 to Emily "Emma" Neville b 1839
(http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/jones/2001-03/0983934562)

The posting goes on to list additional children of William and Nancy and their spouses.  I tracked some of these and was able to confirm names and dates in many cases.  I was able to find 1850 (Lumpkin County) and 1860 (Bulloch County) census forms for William and Nancy Jones, nothing for 1870, and 1880 and 1900 census forms for a widowed Nancy Jones living in Bulloch County with her children.  So far I haven’t found a marriage record or gravesites for either of them.  The problem is of course that there is no census or other form listing Mathew on the same document as his parents.  Additionally, I can’t confirm William or Nancy living in Liberty County around 1833-1835.  I had hoped to verify some documents this week, but the Virtual Vault website seems to be down this weekend (4-6 March 2011).  The main Georgia Archives website works (http://www.sos.ga.gov/archives/), but none of the links to the Vault (http://cdm.sos.state.ga.us/) seem to be working. [UPDATE 4/7/2010: The website has been fixed, just make sure that the first part of the web address url after the // is cdm.sos instead of content.sos.  I will update attempt to update all the links in my posts.]   In any case, I haven’t had luck with the finding additional documentation, but I hope to at least find a marriage record, perhaps by ordering microfilm from the Family History Library. 

Emily Jones' Widow's Indigent pension application for 1906

East Georgia in 1835; map courtesy of the Newberry Library
(http://historical-county.newberry.org/website/Georgia/viewer.htm)

 Another issue, and the reason I spent so much time discussing Mathew’s year of birth, is that if the record of Nancy Hendricks’ birth is correct she would have been 13, 14 or 15 years old when Mathew was born.  None of these very young ages are unheard of for brides in the early 1800s, but it does give one pause.  I did find Jones and Hendricks/Hendrix families in close proximity in Bulloch County, so the connection is entirely possible.  Nevertheless, the link to my possible 3G Grandparents William M & Nancy (Hendricks) Jones is tenuous at best, supported by only one transcribed document with no additional primary or secondary sources.  Still, while researching this particular set of names I came across another posting in the Rootsweb mailing list archive, in this case the GA maililng list (GADATA-L Archives) at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/gadata/2004-02/1076555967.  This is a lengthy discussion of a Daniel E. Jones who was born around 1787 in North Carolina to a Welsh immigrant, Daniel Eastwood Jones, and his Irish wife.  (I’ve also seen both father and son listed as Daniel Eastman Jones in other family trees since this initial discovery.)  The original posting to Rootsweb was made by William Scott, Jr., in 2004.  It details Daniel E’s wife Susanah and lists their children, William among them.  In part, it says:

He [Daniel E. Jones] married Susanah Miller on 3 October 1811 in Tattnall County, and they had all their children there. Susanah was born in Screven County, Georgia, in 1793, a daughter of Revolutionary Soldier William Miller (1759-1837) and Amy Barker (1760-1831). One of William Miller's ancestors, James Wood, founded Winchester, Virginia.
William M. Jones
b. 24 November 1813 Tattnall County, Georgia
d. 25 August 1877 Bulloch County, Georgia
married Nancy Hendricks
17 February 1820 Tattnall County, Georgia
8 August 1907 Bulloch County, Georgia
daughter of John Hendricks (1790-1837) and Jemima Brewton (1798-1876)

The post also details property ownership by Daniel père in Tatnall and Bulloch Counties and by Daniel fils in Bulloch County, and that Daniel E. (the son) moved his family to Lumpkin County, near present-day Dahlonega, in the 1840s.  As Bill Scott tells it:
In the 1840s, Daniel and his family, with the exception of daughter Mary (who married John Smith), moved to Lumpkin County in the 1840s. He was listed in the 1854 and 1855 Lumpkin Tax Digests, in Davis's District #935, owning 154 in 1854 and 156 in 1855, and one slave. His son William M. Jones (who married Nancy Hendricks), the only one of Daniel's children to eventually return to Bulloch County, was also listed, with 3 children and 70 acres.

Why would Daniel E. Jones move with his family at that time even though he owned farmlands in Bulloch County?  Because of the Georgia Gold Rush.  The Wikipedia article is a good starting place, but this is a good example of why you should try to understand the history of the state and the country at the times in which your ancestors lived.  Knowing when major events of the time occurred, not just wars, but things like this Gold Rush, the various financial panics and depressions, etc. help you to understand their motivation and something of their lives.  This will help to make your forebears come alive to you.

Marriage record for Daniel E. Jones & Susannah Miller

I was able to find a transcribed marriage record from the Tattnall County marriage books for “Danl. E. Jones to Susannah Miller; License issued 30 Sept. 1811, and married 3 Oct. 1811”.  This marriage transcription, dating from March 1938, is what is preserved in the microfilm.  I can only assume that the original books had deteriorated to such an extent that they weren’t made available to the team performing the microfilming.  There is a notation in the book verifying the authenticity of the transcription, performed by Hazel Easterling and Ella Mae Scott and signed by the Ordinary of Tattnall County.  I also have census forms for Daniel E. Jones for 1820 and 1830 in Bulloch County and for 1840 and 1850 in Lumpkin County.  The ages of the members of his household given before 1850 seem to agree with what is expected based on the children listed in the Rootsweb posting.

One big problem connecting all Daniel and William M. Jones to Mathew “Mack” Jones is that on two separate census years (1880 & 1900) Mack says that his father was born in South Carolina.  The census for William M. Jones reports that he was born in Georgia, as does the document detailing the two Daniels and William.  While this isn’t a complete deal-breaker, it is a huge red flag.  More research and more documentation are needed before I can accept the lineage given in these two Rootsweb postings.  This is a prime example of both the value and the danger of relying on other people’s research.  I need to do additional research of my own in order to decide which of the conflicting claims, if either, is true.  And I’ve reached another brick wall.  My plan of attack is to document all the Mathew Joneses and William Joneses for the appropriate years, and their families where possible, by search census records, deeds & mortgages and marriage books.  This will give me an idea of how many people could have these names, and how many could be related.  Hopefully someone will come through with more information to make this search more focused, or another discovery will open new windows on this portion of my family’s past.

Here’s your summary:

• It is often helpful to search Rootsweb, Ancestry.com forums, GaGenWeb and other forum sites and mailing lists for your surnames and counties.  Often a Google search will turn these up; to search within each forum or mailing list using Google without having to go to each site separately use the following trick (I learned it from The Genealogy Guys podcast, but it has been posted on numerous other websites and blogs): in the Google search box, type in the surname and any other search terms to narrow your search, then type a space, then type the word “site” (without the quotation marks) followed by a colon (the two dots) followed by a forum or mailing list website’s base url, like this

  Jones Bulloch Georgia site:archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com
  

  Typing in
  

  Jones Bulloch Georgia site:Rootsweb.com
  

  gives a different set of results, as does
  

  Jones Bulloch Georgia site:ancestry.com

  The important thing is to leave a space between your search term(s) and the word “site” but DON’T leave spaces between “site” and the colon (“:”) and the url.  You can have whatever complex search terms you want, with or without quotation marks before the space and the word “site”, so I can type:
  

  “Mathew Jones” +Bulloch +“deed book” site:rootsweb.ancestry.com

  in Google and hit the search button for a different set of results.  As usual, add or subtract search terms and modify the url as needed.  The + marks (plus signs) aren’t supposed to make a difference, but I find that sometimes they do.
• To repeat (because it bears repeating frequently): Families weren't always consistent or particularly accurate with names or ages when talking to the census takers.  When conflicts arise, try to arrive at a reasonable decision based on a preponderance of evidence.
• Marriage and death records can often be found online at Georgia’s Virtual Vault, a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

Keeping Up With the Joneses III

Mathew Jones family; census images from Ancestry.com

So far, in tracing my Jones family history, I’ve gone back from my grandfather James Dewey Jones to his parents Jacob Jones (1866-1951) and Nancy Rosanna “Rosa” Barnes (1872-1948).  While I haven’t yet obtained all the primary documentation I would like, I have obtained enough to prove the “living memory” recollections of my father and his siblings.  That isn’t considered acceptable by many genealogists, amateur or professional, but in this case I’m willing to take the risk and continue on up the ancestral stream.  The documentation I have obtained suffices for now.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are no surviving records of the 1890 US census, so we have to jump back 20 years to the 1880 census to pick up that particular thread.  In looking for a Jake or Jacob Jones of around 14 in 1880 in Bulloch County, I come up with one likely suspect.  His parents are Mathew and Emaly Jones, aged 45 and 40 respectively.  Not really enough to go on, but enough to pursue.  I checked the 1870 and 1900 census records for Mathew & Emaly & family, and came up with close matches, though Mathew is called “Mack” on the 1870 census.  But here’s where a little serendipity comes in.

Many researchers will tell you to pick one line of your family tree and pursue that in order to avoid getting lost or confused in the mass of data you can collect.  I must confess to being rather liberal in my definition of a family line.  When researching a paternal line, I try to go at least one branch out with children and spouses.  I don’t dig too hard, but if the data can be turned up without much difficulty I go ahead and grab the documents and citations.  Yes, sometimes I get distracted on a collateral line for a few days or more, but this isn’t a race, people!  

Green B. Barnes family; census images from Ancestry.com

Anyway, when looking for information on my great-grandparents on the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website I found two Jones-Barnes marriage certificates issued by Bulloch County, one for “Mr. John Jones and Miss E.C Barnes” in 1886 and one for “Mr. Jacob Jones & Miss Rosie Barnes” in 1891.  Plus a death certificate for Ella C. Jones, wife of John Jones, who died 13 March, 1927.  Her parents were given on the death certificate as G. B. Barnes and Missoria Beasley.  Additionally, on the 1880 census record for Bulloch County where I found Rosa (bottom of one sheet carrying over to the top of the next sheet) it shows the household consisting of Green B., Masoria, Ellen C., James H., Willis R., Rosa, Molly A. E., Magga M., John G. & Sarah Barnes, and 18-year-old laborer John Jones.  And they were just a few census sheets away from the listing for Mathew Jones & family, which doesn’t list John on the 1880 census.

Want still more serendipity?  When I was reviewing my research for this posting, I noticed that Ella’s death certificate listed the place of burial as Brooklet Cemetery.  On a whim, I looked up Brooklet Cemetery on the Find A Grave website, and found it.  I typed just the last name Jones into the search box for that cemetery and Bingo!, I found them, not only had user nu2ga created an online memorial, but the user had also posted pictures of their gravesite (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65913216).  What’s more nu2ga (aka Allie Woodard), the kind person who created the Find A Grave memorial for John and Ella also posted a transcript of his 1950 obituary from the obituary file of the Statesboro Regional Library, though no further citation was available.  It says, in part:

     Statesboro, Ga., March 19 - John Jones, 88, died early this afternoon after an illness of several months. He was a native of Bulloch County and had lived in the Brooklet community most of his life….
     Survivors include one son, Rufus Jones, Savannah; two daughters, Mrs. T.J. Hagin of Statesboro, and Mrs. W.J. Richter, Savannah; one sister, Mrs. Nicie O'Quinn, Savannah; four brothers, J.M.D. Jones, Cyler Jones and Rafe Jones, all of Statesboro; and Jake Jones of Port Wentworth…

Find A Grave website: John Jones

So, though this isn’t primary source material, it is valuable supporting secondary source material.  The surviving siblings listed in the obituary match the children included on the various census records where Mathew “Mack” Jones & his wife Emily are recorded.  Whew!  This has been a journey.  I’ve got a little bit more on the Joneses, and I’ll cover that in one more post if you’ll bear with me!

Here’s your summary:

• It probably is best to focus on one family line (one surname) at a time, but don’t be afraid to be a little generous in bending that rule.  You can often fill in the nearby family members quite easily while you’re documenting you primary line of descent.  And you never know when the people you encounter may come in handy in finding your own direct line ancestors, even though they are distant aunts, uncles and cousins.
• To repeat (because it bears repeating frequently): Families weren't always consistent or particularly accurate with names or ages when talking to the census takers.  When conflicts arise, try to arrive at a reasonable decision based on a preponderance of evidence.
• Marriage and death records can often be found online at Georgia’s Virtual Vault, a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• This also bears frequent repeating: Find A Grave, at findagrave.com is a wonderful online resource, though it’s not exhaustive.  My bookmark for the site goes straight to the search page at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&.  It’s a searchable database of user-submitted cemetery and graveyard information from around the world, though the majority of the listings seem to be in the USA.  Because it’s user-submitted, not all cemeteries and graveyards are covered, and every gravesite isn’t listed.  But it does have a surprising number, with more being constantly added.  Additionally, many have pictures of the tombstone or other grave marker.  So search the site and consider joining.  It’s free.  And you could do a great service to the wider community by joining and contributing wherever you can, even if it’s just a few pictures of your close relatives graves.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

Keeping Up With the Joneses II

In my last post I began discussing my Jones family history, starting with my grandfather James Dewey Jones (1907-1973).  And, though I still need to obtain copies of his death certificate and marriage license I want to continue back as far as I can go.  I do have his parents’ names from three sources: my grandmother’s Bible, the census forms I found online, and information from my cousin Michelle, so let’s chase more Joneses as we go “forward into the past!”

(top) Vrg, Grandmother Rose, Emy,
Grandpa Jake; (bottom) Paul, Vera, Dan

The parents of James Dewey Jones were Jacob Jones (1866-1951) and Nancy Rosanna “Rosa” Barnes (1872-1948).  Both died before I was born, but my father remembers his grandparents.  Both were born too early to have a birth certificate and I haven’t yet started ordering any death certificates, but I have a number of other sources I can draw on to supplement the personal memories of my living relatives.  First (working backwards) I have a picture, courtesy of my cousin Michelle again, of Jacob & Rosa’s gravestone, showing birth and death dates.  It is located at the North Salem Baptist Church Cemetery in Port Wentworth, Chatham County, Georgia, the same church my grandparents attended all the time I was growing up and where they are also buried.  Because they died before 1962, a search of the SSDI (Social Security Death Index) proves fruitless.  There are some deaths recorded in the SSDI dating as far back as 1937, but very few.  So I’m not surprised.

Jake Jones & Rosa Barnes Jones

Tombstones and other grave markers are funny things.  While most people regard these as concrete evidence of a person’s life and death they aren’t anything more than a memorial placed by others (usually family) after a person’s death.  The date of death on these stone memorials is generally accurate, particularly for gravestones of people who have died in the past century or so, the dates of birth can be problematic, particularly in rural areas where birth records are often sketchy at best until well into the 20^th century.  I know people who were born in rural Georgia in the 1930’s who were issued delayed birth certificates decades after they were born because an original was never issued at the time of their birth.  When you go back earlier than that, and into the 1800s, you are often lucky to get a consistent year of birth from one record to the next.  Education was often minimal.  Parents would lie about their childrens' ages to get them to work in the fields sooner.  It was a hand-to-mouth existence for sharecroppers like my great-grandparents and they did what was necessary to provide for their family.

1900 Census, Bulloch County, Georgia

So the grave marker for Jacob and Rosa Barnes Jones is valuable corroborating evidence, but not conclusive for dates of birth.  Note, for example, on the 1900 census, that the record indicates Jake Jones was born July 1865 and Rosie Jones was born March 1870, while the gravestone has Jacob Jones born March 1866 and Rosa born July 1872.  The census was taken in June of 1900.  If whoever gave the information to the census taker got the birth months mixed up and said Rosa was “about 30”, then the census taker would have figured backwards from the age an birth month to calculate the year.  And that’s assuming that it wasn’t intentional fudging of dates whenever talking to a government worker.  However, I am reasonably confident that this census record is that of my Jacob & Rosa Jones in Bulloch County in 1900.  One piece of lore for which I have as yet NO documentation is that two of Jake & Rosa’s sons had multiple middle names: Green Mathew Daniel Jones (1895-1963) and Jacob John Cuyler "Shank" Jones (1899-1976).  I do have a copy of a picture that shows Jake and Rosa with some of their children (thanks again to Michelle; my aunt Mildred Jones Helmey has the original).  The photo is undated, but probably from the early 1940s.  I’m hoping for more pictures and for family reminiscences when I attend a family reunion this spring.  The idea is to add confirmation to the number and names of Jake and Rosa’s children, and where they lived, and hopefully confirm the documentation I’ve been able to find.

Jacob Jones & Rosa Barnes
Marriage License
(click any picture for a larger image)

One other important document I have from Jacob and Rosa’s life is a copy of their marriage license.  As with the other marriage records I have obtained so far I got this from the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website maintained by the Georgia Archives, a division of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.  I posted it previously when I discussed finding marriage records at the Virtual Vault, but here it is again.  It shows that the marriage license was issued in Bulloch County, Georgia, to Jacob Jones and Miss Rosie Barnes on 22 August 1891 by A. R. Lanier, Ordinary.  The marriage was performed 26 August 1891 by J. B. Lee, S.P. & J.P. and recorded in the marriage book on 8 June 1892, again by A. R. Lanier, Ordinary.  I read J. B. Lee’s title as “S.P.  & J.P.”, but now, after a little Google research, I think it might be “N.P. & J.P.”, as in “Notary Public & Justice of the Peace.”  It seems more likely and solves that little mystery.

Since the 1890 census records did not survive there is a gap in the documentation, and this seems to be a good place to end this posting.  As I move back up this branch of the family tree, my primary paternal line, the research gets more and more difficult.  The period from the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression (1865 to 1941) was hard on everyone, but particularly on poor farmers in the South; “hardscrabble” is a word that comes to mind.  I have begun a search in microfilmed records available through the Family Search Center, looking for property and legal records that may exist, but so far it doesn’t appear that my Joneses owned property or wrote wills during those decades.  I haven’t located any probate records of intestate decedents or other court records, though I haven’t yet searched through the court minutes of the inferior and superior courts (in case they got into legal troubles).  I haven’t found any indication of a Jones family Bible from that time period.   

But I think I’ve found enough to at least give me a framework to build on, and I’ll tackle the parents of Jacob Jones in my next post.

Here’s your summary:

• To repeat an important point: Talk to your relatives.  An old family Bible is a valuable find.  Quite often they may be the only record of your relatives’ births, marriages and deaths.  When possible, try to link living memory with the historic document.  Is there someone alive who has personal memory of the people listed in the Bible record?  Try to get their stories recorded.  They can provide valuable clues about where to search and who to look for.
• Families weren't always consistent or particularly accurate when talking to the census takers.  While the census forms are extremely valuable, they aren’t necessarily to be taken as Gospel truth.  When conflicts arise, try to arrive at a reasonable decision based on a preponderance of evidence.  At times you go with the “earliest report” method.  The earliest reported age is generally going to be the most accurate.
• You can search the SSDI in a variety of places on the web, including Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank.com, and the FamilySearch site.
• Marriage and death records can often be found online at Georgia’s Virtual Vault, a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• There is a wonderful resource for finding gravestones, call Find A Grave, at findagrave.com.  My bookmark for the site goes straight to the search page at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&.  It’s a searchable database of user-submitted cemetery and graveyard information from around the world, though the majority of the listings seem to be in the USA.  Because it’s user-submitted, not all cemeteries and graveyards are covered, and every gravesite isn’t listed.  But it does have a surprising number, with more being constantly added.  Additionally, many have pictures of the tombstone or other grave marker.  So search the site and consider joining.  It’s free.  And you could do a great service to the wider community by joining and contributing wherever you can, even if it’s just a few pictures of your close relatives graves.
• Don’t forget to use your local public and university libraries, WorldCat (the online card catalog indexing hundreds of libraries across the country), Google Books, eBay and Amazon.com to search out books that may provide indexes to primary resources (marriage indexes, cemetery indexes, will book indexes, etc), as well as published county and family histories that may have information on your ancestors.  Construct search phrases composed of state, county and family names in various combinations, such as “Bulloch County Georgia marriages”, “Jones family history Georgia”, “Jacob Jones Bulloch Georgia”.  You’ll get a lot of extraneous hits, but occasionally you’ll get lucky and make a real find that you might otherwise have missed.  Make sure you read the FAQs or Help files on constructing complex queries that group phrases with quotation marks and plus signs, or use a separate “advanced query” web page; the exact method varies with each search site.
• Google your counties and add “historical society” or “genealogical society” or “genealogy” to the search phrase.  Consider joining the local historical or genealogical society you may find, even if you no longer live there.  They often have published information that may not be available anywhere else, plus many offer volunteer look-up services for free or for a nominal fee to members.  Plus they can always use your support.  While these are volunteer organizations, there is still a cost involved in editing and publishing the information in a format that is widely accessible, whether as a hard-cover book, soft-cover magazine or booklet, CD, or other, there are costs involved, and your support can prove invaluable.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

Keeping Up With the Joneses

I’ve already traced part of my maternal lineage back to Joshua Perry, who was born in Warren County in 1805, but migrates westward to Early County and died in Calhoun County in 1863.  Now let’s look at my primary paternal family, the Joneses.

Maggie & Dewey Jones (about 1950)

People who have a really uncommon surname, with few mentions in the historical record, think having a name like Jones would be just great.  They’re mistaken!  Don’t get me wrong, I like my last name, but when trying to trace your ancestors it can be truly a curse if you have to rely on just the public record.  Once you get back past living memory, it becomes easy to lose people, or conflate individuals (merge two people into one identity), or just lose track of the line altogether.

I’m lucky that my father is still living, as are most of his siblings.  And I’m extremely lucky that one of my cousins, Michelle, has been researching the family history for a couple of decades.  She has a great number of family names and dates, many gravestone photos and other documentation.  But I have used my own source of Ancestry.com to obtain census records.  I’ve also used Georgia’s Virtual Vault to secure copies of some death certificates and marriage records.  And I’ve come up with some possible clues to more distant ancestors that she had not yet seen.  So I’m going to cover some of that for a few columns.

My grandparents were James Dewey Jones (1907-1973) and Maggie Frances Stringer (1907-2000).  They married in Claxton, Evans County, Georgia, in 1928.  Right away I run into problems.  I can find census records for 1910, 1920 and 1930.  His age is 2 in 1910, 14 in 1920 and 20 in 1930.  The 1930 census shows him living with Maggie and son James Dewey Jr. with his parents, and that he was 19 when first married.  I also have copies of pages from Maggie’s bible, given to me by my cousin Michelle.  It states that my grandfather was born 13 Dec 1908.  The Stringer family bible (again, the pages were provided by my cousin Michelle, though I also have paper copies given to me by my parents) lists my grandmother’s name as Frances Magadilin, and gives her marriage date to Dewey Jones as “Oct 6 1928.”  Granddaddy’s gravestone is carved with his birth date as 13 Dec 1907.

Oh my goodness!

Stringer Bible (left) - Jones Bible (right)

In this situation, there is a great deal of conflicting data in the sources.  There is no “preponderance of evidence” here.  So in this case I went with the first and last sources.  The 1910 census states that he was 2 years old in June of that year which is consistent with a birth date of 13 Dec 1907, and that’s what is on his gravestone.  Furthermore, I looked up his SSDI (Social Security Death Index) record online and found the same date there.  So that’s what I’ll use until further evidence comes in, though I will note the discrepancy in dates in my notes.

I mentioned the SSDI.  If you haven’t used it yet, the Social Security Death Index can be a very valuable tool for discovering or verifying vital statistics and possibly other family names as well.  The SSDI is available online from a variety of sources, including Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank.com and Family Search.  The first two are pay subscription sites; the Family Search site is free.  If a death was reported to the Social Security Administration after 1962 when they began keeping electronic records, then the person is in this database.  There are also some individuals included who died before then, but after Social Security became law.  A quick search in Ancestry.com turns up the index record for my grandfather.  I can also use the retrieved Social Security Number (SSN) to order a copy of what’s called the SS-5 form, “Original Application for a Social Security Card”.  You can now order these online directly from the SSA at https://secure.ssa.gov/apps9/eFOIA-FEWeb/internet/main.jsp.  The fee is $27 if you know the SSN, $29 if you don’t.  The SS-5 often provides information on your ancestor’s name, address, date of birth and parents’ names.  The farther back you go, the less likely you are to find all of this information on the form, but it’s a valuable piece of documentation nevertheless.  I still need to order a copy of my grandfather’s SS-5.

 

There will be no birth certificate, but there are other documents I still need to obtain on James Dewey Jones.  I need to order a copy of his death certificate and marriage license (Evans County records aren’t available through the Virtual Vault).  However, I do have his parents’ names from the Bible pages my grandmother wrote and from the census forms, as well as from information provided by Michelle, so next time we’ll go back another generation or two, trying to keep up with the Jones!

Here’s your summary:

• Talk to your relatives.  An old family Bible is a valuable find.  Quite often they may be the only record of your relatives’ births, marriages and deaths.  When possible, try to link living memory with the historic document.  Is there someone alive who has personal memory of the people listed in the Bible record?  Try to get their stories recorded.  They can provide valuable clues about where to search and who to look for.
• Ancestry.com has much more than census records and family trees.  Try using the SSDI to search for ancestors who died in the 20^th century – particularly those who passed away during the second half of the century.  Then use the SSN you obtain to order a copy of the person’s SS-5 form for documentation and as a pointer towards areas of additional research.
• Families weren't always consistent or particularly accurate when talking to the census takers.  While the census forms are extremely valuable, they aren’t necessarily to be taken as Gospel truth.  When conflicts arise, try to arrive at a reasonable decision based on a preponderance of evidence.  At times you go with the “earliest report” method.  The earliest reported age is generally going to be the most accurate.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim