Lyda Ellen Maxwell Perry

Where did the summer go?!?  I didn’t intend to take four months off from writing, it just sort of happened one week at a time.  I haven’t been idle; indeed, carrying on my genealogical research has become virtually a second job.  Not many people “relax” by spending hours scanning microfilm or searching dusty tomes at a library or historical archive.  But my writing has suffered – not for lack of material or inspiration but rather the opposite, a wavering indecision and paralysis of will brought on by profusion, indeed a surfeit, of ancestral distractions.  Now, I’ll try once again to return to a regular schedule of publishing.  I may change up the style of this blog and experiment a bit in the coming weeks, interspersing shorter posts among the longer expository as I share my discoveries with you.  I will put less emphasis on the “instructional” aspects of genealogical blogging, and more on sharing personal research.

This beautiful young lady was my mother’s father’s mother, Lyda Ellen Maxwell.  Lyda was born 24 Oct 1890 in Amsterdam, Decatur County, Georgia, the fifth of ten children of J. A. O. Maxwell and Permelia Ruth McNair Maxwell, though the first-born, an unnamed son, died at one day old in 1879, and only seven of the ten would live into adulthood.  And Lyda and another brother both died at age 31.  I’m not sure when this picture was taken, but my guess is 1904, certainly between 1902 and 1906. 

Remember, you can click on any image to view a larger version.

In 1900, Lyda lived with her parents J.A.O. Maxwell (spelled out as “Jay A”) and Permelia Ruth McNair Maxwell (inexplicably named “Lizzie R”; a nickname, perhaps? This is the only place where I’ve seen her so named.), and her siblings, near Attapulgus, Decatur County, Georgia.  (Ancestry.com inexplicably has the name indexed as Maswell.  Go figure!)

Census images courtesy of Ancestry.com.

This second picture was apparently taken the same day as the solo portrait above, and portrays Lyda with some of her brothers and sisters.  Someone has scrawled this legend on the back:

Brother Oliver Maxwell's children. Two oldest not here.

He had 3 boys and 5 girls.

The largest boy here was Bessie Maxwell's husband - Malcolm.

The little boy, Corry, was crippled and died young.

In picture:

1 Lyda (wife of John Isaiah Perry Sr.)

2 Sallie (Aunt Sarah)   3 Julia,   4 Elsie

5 Nancy (Aunt Nan) not in picture

6 Joseph not in picture

7 Malcolm

8 Corry

The “two oldest” mentioned were Joseph, born in 1880, and Nancy, who was born in 1883.  Lyda was born in 1890, Sarah in 1892^{footnote 1}, Malcolm in 1893, Corry in 1895, and the two youngest girls, Julia and Elsie, were born in 1897 and 1899.  (I actually think the youngest girls’ names are reversed in the picture’s caption.)  In 1902, their ages would have been Lyda 12, Sarah 10, Malcolm 9, Corry 7, Julia 5, and Elsie 3.  Four years later, in 1906, Lyda would have been 16, and the younger girls would have been 7 and 9, which seems a little old for the pictured children, so that’s why I settled on an approximate date of 1904, when Lyda would have been 14, Sarah 12, Malcolm 11, Corry 9, Julia 7 and Elsie 5.  As a further circumstantial clue, elder sister Nancy Mae Maxwell married Matthew Henry Overstreet on 16 May 1904, so this could be a group shot of the rest of the bride’s siblings taken during the wedding festivities.  It’s an interesting possibility.  To-Do Item: Try to find some Overstreet cousins who may still have wedding pictures of Nancy and Matthew Overstreet, possibly including the parents of the bride.

My great grandfather John Isaiah Perry, Sr., married Lyda in Decatur County, Georgia, on 17 May 1908, when she was seventeen-and-a-half.  (See my previous post on my Perry line discussing John Sr.)  He was twelve years her senior.  I still don’t have the marriage record or marriage license, but this summer I located a transcription of the index to Decatur County Marriage Records, 1825-1945, at the Decatur County GAGenWeb pages of the GAGenWeb Project (http://www.thegagenweb.com/gadecatur/Marriage/surindex.html).  To-Do Item: Contact the Decatur County Clerk's office in Bainbridge to order a copy of the marriage license.

Census images courtesy of Ancestry.com.

By the time of the 1910 census, enumerated in June just after their second anniversary, tragedy had struck again, for the census shows that she had born one child, but none were living.  The 1910 census was taken on the 18^th of April, so Lyda was seven months pregnant with my grandfather.  Unfortunately, the 1920 census did not question women on the number of births and surviving children.  I know that one son, Jessie, was born in September 1913 and died in March 1914 while she was visiting her parents down in Attapulgus, Decatur County, Georgia, just 60 miles southwest of John & Lyda’s home in Sale City, Mitchell County.  I found his grave near to those of his grandparents J.A.O. Maxwell and Permelia Ruth McNair Maxwell in Piedmont Cemetery, in Calvary, Georgia. 

There are also two unmarked child-sized grave covers at the feet of John and Lyda’s graves in the cemetery at Sale City (see below).  That implies there might be a third, unknown child who died in infancy or early childhood.  Another To-Do Item: try to find out if the Sale City cemetery has active management and records from the first decades of the 20^th Century in hopes of discovering the identities and burial dates of the two persons buried in the unmarked graves.    

The picture here at left (courtesy of Barbara Perry Walker) of Lyda with sons John I, Jr, and Maxwell (my grandfather), and she is holding a baby Ruth, so this would be about 1915. 

This second picture (courtesy of Ann Perry Jones) show Lyda with son Maxwell (standing to the left) and Maxwell’s cousins, the children of Lyda’s sister Nancy Maxwell Overstreet, taken about 1918.  Starting with Maxwell in the upper left and proceeding clockwise the picture shows Wilbur, Juanita, Doris, Nell and little baby Ralph Overstreet, who is being held by Lyda Maxwell Perry. 

In 1920 the census shows John and Lyda living on Barnes Street, on the north side of Sale City, with sons Maxwell, age 9, John I Jr, 7 and William P, 6 months, and daughter Ruth, age 5^{footnote 2}.  John Sr was a prosperous merchant, owning a dry goods store in Sale City and selling to farmers throughout the neighboring counties.  But this happy world soon came to a crashing end.  On January 8, 1922, Lyda Ellen Maxwell Perry, age 31, died suddenly.  Her death certificate^{footnote 3} lists the cause of death as “apoplexy” – essentially the diagnosis at the time for any sudden loss of consciousness followed quickly by death (see the article on Apoplexy in Wikipedia).  I know that my mother told me her father was terribly devoted to his mother, so I think it must have been a terrible blow to him and his siblings to lose her at such an early age.  This was a terrible time again for the family.  The next month, in February, John Sr’s brother Jesse Green Perry took ill and died unexpectedly at the age of 39, leaving behind a wife (Harriet "Hattie" P Mason, 1892-?) and young daughter (Frances Perry, 1916-?).  Then in August 1923 John Sr's mother Elizabeth Margrette Cutts Perry died after a short illness; she was only 69.  Elizabeth Perry's tombstone was shown in a previous post.

John Isaiah Perry, Sr, Family Plot, Sale City Cemetery, Sale City, Mtichell County, Georgia
Top (left) row, near to far: Lyda Ellen Maxwell Perry (1890-1922), John Isaiah Perry, Sr (1878-1956); Bottom (right) row, near to far: two unidentified infant graves, Elizabeth Margarette Cutts Perry (John Sr’s mother, 1854-1923), unidentified grave (possibly a child?), and Jesse Green Perry (John Sr’s brother, 1883-1922).

Footnote 1: The 1900 Census gives a Jun 1888 birth for “Sallie Maxwell”; I can't find a 1910 census listing her.  By the 1920 census she is married to Paul A. Branch and living near John & Lyda Perry in Sale City.  The census reports that she is 28, which would mean she was born about 1892).  The 1930 census gives her age as 37 (born about 1893).  And finally, her tombstone gives her birth date as 29 June 1892. Which is it?? Is she two years older or two years younger than my great grandmother Lyda Maxwell Perry?

Footnote 2: Frank Maxwell, born in 1910, John Isaiah Jr in 1912, Ruth in 1914, and William Preston Perry II, born in 1919 and named after his grandfather who fought in the Civil War and died in 1908, the year John Sr and Lyda were married.

Footnote 3: Death certificate saved 10 Sep 2010 from the Georgia’s Virtual Vault web site of the Georgia Archives; Death Certificates, Vital Records, Public Health, RG 26-5-95, Georgia Archives; (http://content.sos.state.ga.us/cdm4/gadeaths.php). 

That’s about it for now.

 Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

L. Ann Wade Perry

Rev. Henry Holcombe, DD

So far I’ve discussed male ancestors and their descendants almost exclusively.  I’ve mentioned their wives and their parentage hardly at all.  In part this was because with the blog being so new I wanted to establish the two primary lines, Jones and Perry.  Now that I’ve done that so far as I’m able at this time I can branch out and I can explore individuals in depth.  I’d like to start with Joshua Perry’s wife, Louvicia (or Luvisa) Ann(e) Wade.  Her name is written as "Louvicia Ann Wade" in the Screven County marriage record from 1832.  The 1850 census lists her as "Lavisa A Perry", while she's "Louvicia A Perry" in 1860, "Louvisa A Perry" in 1870, and "Lovisa Perry" in 1880.  For simplicity’s sake I’ll call her Ann Wade here.

When I first started working on my genealogy I was fortunate to have access to family histories put together by a previous generation.  This is all I had to go on initially:

JOSHUA PERRY was born December 6, 1805 in Warren County, GA. and died March 29, 1868 in Calhoun County, GA. He married LOUVICIA ANN WADE October 2, 1832 in GA, daughter of REV PEYTON L WADE. She was born September 26, 1806 in Screven County, GA, and died October 9, 1884 in Camilla, GA.

Joshua Perry died Calhoun Co. March 29, 1868. Buried at Edison, GA. He had a throat infection causing death. He married L. Anne Wade from Screven County, GA. They lived in a home which stood where the present cemetery in Arlington. GA stands. He was well educated. a teacher, was business and legal advisor of neighbors, drawing wills, deeds, etc.

[Descendants of Humphrey Perry, received from Barbara Perry Walker, based on research by Ruth Perry Irwin]

Men of Mark in Georgia

Besides some interesting details about Joshua Perry, this bit does have some errors.  She was still living in Calhoun County in 1880, with her son William Preston Perry, and there is no documentation to indicate she moved in the last four years of her life.  She is buried in Edison, Calhoun County, at the Salem Baptist Church Cemetery.  I have a picture of her gravestone, which I showed in an earlier post. 

I found an index listing the marriage of Joshua Perry to “Louvicia Ann Wade” in Screven County in 1832.  It would be a while before I could obtain a copy of their marriage record because the books digitized online and posted to the Georgia’s Virtual Vault website only go back to 1837 for Screven County.  I had to order the Microfilm from the Family History Library, but I finally got it (image is in the same post as the gravestone cited above).  Next I tackled the person mentioned as her father, Rev. Peyton L. Wade of Screven County. 

A Standard History of
Georgia and Georgians

It turns out that the Rev. Wade is quite a famous person in Georgia.  A quick Google search turns up a lot of information (the books available through Google Books are particularly interesting, though they repeat a lot of information: Men of Mark in Georgia and A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians, among others; both of these are available for free download or can be read online).  Wade was a well-known Methodist preacher who became a wealthy plantation owner.  There’s only one problem here.  He was born in 1797 and died 21 December 1866.  A quick glance at Ann Wade’s tombstone shows that she was born 26 September 1806 and died 9 October 1884.  Cousins they may be, though I haven’t found the link yet, but it is almost certain he isn’t her father.  No matter how great a man Peyton Wade was, I doubt he was so precocious as to father a child at the tender age of nine!  I must keep looking.

When I searched for Ann Wade's name in Ancestry.com the majority of family trees indicated she was the daughter of John McGruder Wade and Nancy Anne Holcombe. That rang a bell because in the Descendants of Humphrey Perry document mentioned above, under William Preston Perry, it says:

William Preston's nickname was "Press".  Reverend Davis gave the funeral eulogy - said "Press" was a direct descendant of Rev. Henry Holcombe.

I still didn’t have a positive link to John M. Wade, but I spent several days researching the Rev. Dr. Henry Holcombe.  He was a fascinating figure.  This is when Google Books really became my friend!  There is a wonderful book called History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia, a 2-volume work originally published in 1881.  It can be found on the Google Books site (click here), which has a limited view of the 2001 reprint (Volume 2 can still be ordered from Amazon.com).  But there is a free version you can view online or download as a pdf, epub, or other file format, available from the Internet Archive website (click here).  Volume 1 has a history of Georgia Baptists through 1880, and Volume 2 has biographical sketches of early Baptist leaders both in and out of the pulpit.  The sketch on Henry Holcombe can be found in Volume 2, pages 2/2-275.  Page 273 has one of my favorite lines, full of insight into the character of early 19^th century Georgians, “Indeed, in those early days a very large proportion of the Baptists of Georgia entertained a prejudice against education, and took no interest in institutions of learning, except to oppose them.”  There is also a typescript on the Ancestry.com website called The Holcombes, nation builders which spends several pages on Henry Holcombe and his children (you need a paid subscription to access this document).

Louisa Calvin Wade Collier's obituary

Looking further into the matter, this time I made use of the facilities available through the Wisconsin Historical Society library in Madison, Wisconsin (you can search it through WorldCat or MadCat).  I found a set of books compiled by Mary McKeown Overby which index (and sometimes summarize) marriage notices and obituaries from much of the 19^th century that were published in The Christian Index, the Georgia Baptist paper.  In one of the volumes, Obituaries Published in The Christian Index, 1880-1899, (1982, Georgia Baptist Historical Society) I looked up “Wade” in the index of the book and found two particular items of interest:

COLLIER, LOUISA CALVIN WADE, 71 yrs, b. 12-7-13, Screven Co, Ga., d. of Nancy W. and John McGruder, niece of Rev. Henry Holcomb, D.D., wife of: John Scott, Ed. Morris, and Jesse Collier; d. 12-6-1884, Early Co, Ga., 5 children.  11-25-1886

[Overby, p. 53]

PERRY, LOUVICIA ANN WADE, 79 yrs, b. 9-26-06, Screven Co., Ga., d. of John McGruder Wade and Nancy Holcombe, w. of Joshua Perry d. 10-7-1884, niece of Rev. Henry Holcombe.  03-25-1886, p.15

[Overby, p. 182]

In looking for the availability of a digitized, online version of The Christian Index, I was only able to locate the issues available through ProQuest (a service available through many public and university libraries), which I accessed through the Wisconsin Historical Society library.  This is an extremely limited set of issues from scattered years, but I was able to locate Louisa Collier’s obituary, which says, in part:

Mrs. Louisa Calvin Collier was born December 7th, 1813, and died Dec. 6th, 1884, being 71 years old, lacking one day.  My precious mother's maiden name was Wade, the youngest child of John McGruder and Nancy Wade, many years ago residents of Screven county, Ga.  She was a niece of Rev. Henry Holcombe, D.D., and was proud of the relationship she bore to that great and good man.

[The Christian Index: Thursday, November 25, 1886; p. 15]

John Wade & Nancy Holcombe
marriage notice, 1796
(image courtesy of GenealogyBank.com)

I plan to acquire the obituary for Ann Perry when I visit Georgia in April.  The Jack Tarver Library at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, is the official repository for the Georgia Baptist Archives, and has “as complete a set of The Christian Index as is possible to secure” on microfilm (Jack Tarver Library Special Collections webpage: http://tarver.mercer.edu/archives/formats.php).  I haven’t found the marriage record for John Wade and Nancy Holcombe, but I was able to find the marriage announcement for John and Nancy from the Georgia Gazette (9 Jun 1796):

Savannah, June 9

Married on Tuefday laft [Tuesday last] in Screven county, Mr. John Mc Wade

to Mifs [Miss] Anne Holcombe, fifter [sister] of the Rev. Henry Holcombe,

of Beaufort, South Carolina.

[Georgia Gazette (Broughton St, Savannah, GA; James & Nicholas Johnston) Tuesday, 9 Jun 1796; No. 698); p 3; image from GenealogyBank.com (paid subscription required)]

Dixon Hollingsworth card on John M. Wade

Another valuable research tool for Screven County, Georgia, is The Dixon Hollingsworth Surname Cards Collection “contain[ing] names and information about families in Screven County” from its origin through about 1994.  I did a surname search on both Perry and Wade and came up with many interesting factoids to pursue.  Among them were summaries of the obituaries for both John and Nancy Wade (Ann Wade’s presumed parents), and the fact that John Wade remarried after Nancy’s death.  Plus an interesting tidbit, that John Wade may have represented Screven County in the Georgia Legislature.  The obituaries specifically reference The Christian Index, so I have more issues to look up while I’m in Macon.  When you click on your results from a search you see PDF images of the actual 3x5 index cards, like this example of one of John Wade’s cards.  I looked up John Wade in the Georgia Official and Statistical Register, which lists most of the people who have ever been elected to state offices in Georgia, and wasn’t able to find him.  However, there is a “John McWade” listed as representing Screven County from 1811 to 1814.  I think that whoever transcribed the names from the written lists read the written “John Mc Wade” and took out the space.  Having seen pages of the Screven County Returns where John Wade was a principal or witness in a legal proceeding, I know that his name was written with the “Mc” abbreviation of his middle name “McGruder”.  This was common well into the 20^th century, usually with the "c" written as a superscript but not always.  You can find numerous examples of indexes where the “Mc” names are listed separately from the “M” names, instead of between the “Ma” and “Me” names as is the modern practice.  I want to find the original handwritten lists of legislators someday so that I can confirm this, though.

Sorry this post was late; I was a bit under the weather.  Hopefully you weren’t too bored by its length!

Here’s your summary:

• Even though they are usually very suspect and you must validate the information with your own research, the family trees posted in Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, and other online websites and forums can provide valuable pointers when you might otherwise be at a dead end.  Don’t ignore them completely just because they often don’t cite sources.  Evaluate them as you would any other reference you find.
• Contemporary books, modern indexes and abstracts, and other printed sources can be a valuable resource.  Many of these can be located with place and/or surname searches on Google Books, WorldCat, Internet Archive, and regional archive, library and university websites.  Some surprising resources are online, such as The Dixon Hollingsworth Surname Cards Collection which targets eastern Georgia, specifically Screven County.  It is hosted online by the Screven-Jenkins Regional Library System.  There are probably others if you just look.
• Also, don’t neglect traditional booksites such as Amazon.com, AbeBooks.com, and Barnes and Noble, plus you can sometimes turn up good finds on eBay.  That’s where I found two out-of-print books that have been invaluable to me as ready references: Bulloch County, Georgia Genealogical Source Material, compiled by Alvaretta Kenan Register (1985, Magnolia Press, Swainsboro, GA) and 37,000 Early Georgia Marriages, compiled by Joseph T. Maddox and Mary Carter (1975, Georgia Pioneer Genealogical Magazine, Albany, GA). 
• Newspaper resources online include GenealogyBank.com, the Google News Archive, Chronicling America from the Library of Congress, and regional sites such as Georgia Historic Newspapers.  GenealogyBank is a pay subscription site; others are free.
• State resources such as the Virtual Vault, the Georgia Archives and the Digital Library of Georgia can provide more than just vital records.  Don’t neglect these just because you can’t get a birth or marriage record from them.  Contemporary newspapers, books and official publications can often lead you in unexpected yet rewarding directions.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part V

Where I Hit the Wall 

 

At long last I’ve reached my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884), my brick wall.  60 years before my grandfather was born, on the 1850 US census, I found his grandfather William Preston Perry (1805-1863) living with his father and mother Joshua and Lavisa A. Perry in Early County, Georgia.  Now the wall looms near.

Since I know where Joshua and Louvicia were living, I turn to my trusty FindAGrave.com website and look for their tombstones.  Right away I was able to locate them.  Louvicia’s is unremarkable, providing her name as “Mrs. L. A. Perry” and her birth and death dates.  Joshua’s though gives us additional information and a clue as to where to go next.  “Joshua Perry, Born in Warren Co. Ga. Dec. 6th 1805, Died in Calhoun Co. Ga. March 29th, 1863, Aged 57 Years, 3 months, 23 days”.  Warren County is 200 miles to the northeast of Calhoun County, on the other side of the state.  Time to expand the search.

There are many indexes, databases and resources on Ancestry.com other than just census records.  One of these is a group of marriage indexes, several of which are for Georgia.  I’ve mentioned these before, and they come in useful again here.  Remember these aren’t proof of a marriage, but are valuable pointers to marriage books and other records, and can be useful in locating spouses and the date and location of a marriage.  In this case Joshua and Louvicia are easily found.  This is a screenshot of the results from the Georgia Marriages to 1850 database.  Joshua Perry married Louvicia Ann Wade on 2 October 1832 in Screven County, Georgia.  Screven County is on the Savannah River, across from South Carolina, and about 80 miles southeast of Warren County.

This information prompted another search of the digitized microfilm images of the Georgia county marriage books available at the Georgia’s Virtual Vault web site from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  Unfortunately, the earliest marriage records available online for Screven County date from 1837.  But there is another source to check.  The LDS helped to microfilm the records of thousands of courthouses across the US last century.  And they have copies of all those microfilms available through your local Family History Center (or Family Search Center as they are soon to be called).  You can search for films online at the Family Search site.  Just click on the Library Catalog link, make sure Place-names is selected in the Search box, then type in the state and county in the For box, separated by a comma (for example, Georgia, Screven) and click on the Search button.  Ordinarily you will find marriage books under the Vital Records link, but in some cases early records may also be found under the Probate link.  This is because the Courts of Ordinary (or the Inferior Courts in some cases) handled the issuance of marriage licenses in addition to handling wills and probate as well as deeds and many other civil matters.

In this case, I find that there is a film containing “Vol. A Returns 1821-1832 Marriages 1817-1832 Vol. D Returns 1833-1851 Marriages 1832-1837.”  When you look through your results make sure you are looking for the actual court records and not the books of extracts or indexes.  These can be very useful in searching for documents about which you have little or no detailed information as to their location or even existence.  But the goal is always to obtain a copy of the original document whenever possible.  So I ordered the film for a nominal fee ($5.75) and waited a couple of weeks.  Be patient, it can sometimes take longer if someone else has the only loan copy of a rarely-requested microfilm, or if you are ordering a popular volume that many people want.  Another film I ordered at the same time took over four weeks to arrive.

Reading microfilms of these old records can be challenging.  The online services such as Ancestry.com and Footnote.com really do add value by cleaning up the microfilmed images when they digitize them.  In this case I had to use a lot of tricks to clean up the image myself, and it’s still not great.  Of course, that was after several hours of scanning the pages of the microfilm and trying to find the marriage record.  I missed it the first time through.  Finally, there is was on page 261, I think.  The page numbers aren’t legible in this book, the top corners being almost black.  And there is no index of marriage licenses here.  There is however an index of estates and some of the administrators.  So I looked at several records of estates on either side of the marriage record, located those in the index (some of those index pages are illegible, too, so I couldn’t find all of them), and then counted up and down to figure out the probably page number.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to look at the book itself at the courthouse in Sylvania and confirm that.

And here the trail ends for Joshua Perry.  I know I’ve probably made this sound easier that it was.  And I didn’t just go straight back; I jumped around in my research.  It’s not the recommended procedure, but it was my first line of research and I was trying to document a family tree I received from family, not pursuing an unknown.  But with Joshua I can’t get any farther back.  So far I have no wills or deeds which mention Joshua earlier than 1832 or which refer to his parents.  There isn’t a Joshua Perry listed on the 1830 census in Georgia who could have been the right age to be my Joshua Perry.  The 1820 and 1810 censuses don’t exist for Georgia.  There are bits and scraps of other information from a few newspaper clippings, but I have confirmed only a small part of it.  Louvicia was the niece of a famous Baptist preacher, the Rev. Dr. Henry Holcombe of Savannah and Philadelphia, and Joshua may have been for a short time clerk of the Inferior Court and postmaster.  There is family tradition and a majority of the family trees on Ancestry.com, Rootsweb and elsewhere that says that Joshua’s father was Willis Perry, who was one of the so-call Seven Perry Brothers of North Carolina.  There is some circumstantial evidence for the idea, but so far I haven’t seen one scrap of documentary evidence leading conclusively to that conclusion.   

So here I sit at the foot of my Joshua Tree, knowing there is much to be discovered if I can ever break through this wall, but also knowing that I’ll not give up.  I have a few avenues of research I’m still pursuing on this, but next time I’ll move on to another topic in this blog.  I’m sure most of you have heard all you ever wanted to hear about Joshua!  I'll keep you informed if there's a breakthrough.

Here’s your summary:

• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.
• Ancestry.com has more than just census records.  They also have valuable indexes of birth, marriage and death records. 
• The Family History Center, the Family History Library and Family Search, a closely related set of resources from LDS, are invaluable.  You should find your local Center, and get to know both the individual search and the library search.  The volunteers at your local Center will be glad to help you.
• Don’t forget to Google your ancestors’ names.  Yes, you’ll get a lot of chaff, but if you learn to use Advanced Search, and add keywords and place restrictions, you’ll be surprised at what you can find.  Remember, even if you can’t use an index as a primary source it’s still a valuable pointer to the sources themselves.  That’s how I found the information about the Seven Perry Brothers of North Carolina on Granny Peach’s Perry Page.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part IV

So I’m tracing my Perry ancestors back from my grandfather Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970) to my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884), my brick wall.  Last post I reached my great-great grandfather William Preston Perry (1839-1908) and his two wives, the sisters Georgia F. Cutts (1849-1869) and Elizabeth Margrette Cutts (1854-1923).

 

Making use of the kind contributors to FindAGrave.com I found pictures of the tombstones of William P. Perry Georgia, his first wife Georgia F., in the Salem Cemetery in Edison, Calhoun County, Georgia.  Elizabeth’s tombstone wasn’t there, though, so I looked back at the census records again.  From his tombstone we know that W. P. Perry died in 1908.  So I found him and his family on the 1900 census living in Edison, in Calhoun County, Georgia, right where you’d expect him to be.  For the 1910 census I searched instead for Elizabeth Perry.  I found one Elizabeth Perry, of the right age, widowed, but living down in Mitchell County.  Not surprising since my grandfather grew up in Mitchell County and my great-grandmother died there.  So I broadened my FindAGrave.com search and located a listing for Elizabeth Cutts Perry in the Sale City Cemetery, Sale City, Mitchell County.  

Now that I know Elizabeth Perry died in 1923, I made another search of the Georgia Death Certificates at the Georgia’s Virtual Vault from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  Remember there is a limited window where the death certificates have been digitized and posted to the Virtual Archive.  In this case a quick search was successful and I have Elizabeth Perry’s death certificate.  There isn’t much immediately useful here, but I made note that the informant was H.H. Perry (she had a son, Henry Holcombe Perry), that her middle name was probably Margrette (Martha is scratched out) and in place of the scratched out “don’t know” her mother’s maiden name is written as “Miss Scarbrough.”  It also provides additional corroboration of date of birth, and the date of death confirms the tombstone.

Now, look back up at W.P.’s tombstone.  It not only give his birth and death dates, but adds “Son of Joshua and Anne Perry.”  I’d like to use the census to confirm William’s relationship to his father and mother in the same way that I traced John I. Perry back to William and Elizabeth.  I know that in 1870 

William was living with Louvisa A, Francis M & William T Perry (see Jan 12^th post).  So I look for Joshua Perry in the 1860 census and find him as his family living in Calhoun County.  The family consists of Joshua, Lonvicia A, Francis M & William P Perry and a child Sarah A E Collier (who is a granddaughter, but that’s another story).  On the 1850 census I find Joshua living in Early County.  A quick Google check shows multiple sources noting that Calhoun County was formed in part from Early County in 1854, so that works.  The family consists of Joshua, Lavisa A, Julia, John J, William P, Thadeous J & Francis M Perry.  The names and ages are consistent, though it’s important to point out the spelling variations that occur with Louvicia/Lavisa …  This also ties back into the 1870 census where Louvisa A Perry was living with William P Perry; even though the 1870 census did not show the relationship of household members to the head of household, it’s now apparent that she could easily be his mother, and the 1850 and 1860 censuses, in conjunction with W.P.’s tombstone, increase the likelihood to a near-certainty.

I added the 1840 census to this list to demonstrate an important point.  The 1850 census was the first census to list members of a household.  In 1840 and earlier only the name of the head of household is listed, and then the ages (by age group) and genders of free and slave members.  I’ve built a mostly-solid foundation of evidence getting from my grandfather, Frank M. Perry, to my 3g-grandfather (that’s shorthand for great-great-great grandfather), Joshua Perry.  Prior to about 1918 it’s impossible to obtain birth and death certificates, and many marriage licenses are missing, but census records along with other references fill in nicely.  They aren’t conclusive by themselves, but they add to the “preponderance of evidence” in helping to reach or prove a conclusion.  Unfortunately it appears my progenitors were not fond of creating wills, but I’m still hopeful that when I locate property records (deeds, mortgages, etc.) I’ll have more clues, and I’ll revisit them at that time.  I’ll be relying on the Family History Center and Family Search for those records.

I didn’t show you how I made the jump from Early County in southwestern Georgia to Screven County the other side of the state, but that’s a tale for the next post as we finally hit the wall!

Here’s your summary:

• You should learn about the limitations of the census records, and the various additional questions asked each decade.  A good introduction can be found on the Ancestry.com Learning Center article on census records.
• The Family History Center, the Family History Library and Family Search, a closely related set of resources from LDS, are invaluable.  You should find your local Center, and get to know both the individual search and the library search.  The volunteers at your local Center will be glad to help you.
• Don’t forget to Google your ancestors’ names.  Yes, you’ll get a lot of chaff, but if you learn to use Advanced Search, and add keywords and place restrictions, you’ll be surprised at what you can find.  Remember, even if you can’t use an index as a primary source it’s still a valuable pointer to the sources themselves.
• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part III

So far, working backwards from my grandfather Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970) to my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884), I’ve used a combination of census records and death certificates to document the relationship of Frank to his father John I Perry (1878-1956) and his first wife Lyda E [Maxwell] Perry (1890-1922).  Only two generations to go until I hit my brick wall.

 I have family members’ notes, but I also have John I. Perry’s death certificate, which indicates that his parents were William Preston Perry and Elizabeth Margaret Cutts, and that he was born in Edison, [Calhoun County], Georgia, on 10 October 1878.  A quick search of census records in Ancestry.com gives me the census records I need, covering 1900, 1880, 1870.  I’m continuing to work backwards from what I know, as is recommended by all the experts.  I work on multiple lines simultaneously, which isn’t recommended, though.  Remember the 1890 census records were destroyed by fire in 1921.

Looking at the 1900 census, the household includes the following: William P Perry, age 60, born May 1840, wife Elizabeth M, 46, b Jun 1854, son John J [sic], 21, b Oct 1878, daughter Roser L, 19, b Oct 1880, son Jessee [sic] G, 17, b Jun 1883, daughter Annie B, 14, b Dec 1885, daughter Kittie C, 13, b Jun 1887, daughter Betha M, 11, b Feb 1889, and daughter Ella B, 2, b Oct 1897.  Additionally, William P and Elizabeth M had been married for 29 years, and Elizabeth had 12 children, 9 of whom were still living.

On the 1880 census the family consisted of W.P. Perry, age 40, wife Elizabeth, 26, son Willie, 11, son Frank A, 7, son Henry, 5, son Charlie, 4, son John, 2, and mother Lovisa, age 74.  And on the 1870 census it was William P Perry, 30, Louvisa A, 64, Francis M, 23, and William T, 1.

This could be confusing, but I’m cheating here.  I’m trying to verify a family history that says Frank Maxwell’s father was John Isaiah and John Isaiah’s father was William Preston and William Preston’s father was Joshua.  Additionally, I know who they married. William Preston is said to have married two sisters, Georgia F. Cutts, who died young, and then her sister Elizabeth Margrette Cutts.  But as we discovered last week, there are no death certificates in Calhoun County, Georgia, prior to 1918, and no birth certificates either.  I went looking for marriage certificates and ran into a familiar problem: Calhoun County was created from Early County in 1854, and the Calhoun County Courthouse burned down twice, in 1888 and again in 1920.  While this usually does not result in a total loss of records, it appears that marriage records were particularly affected in one of these fires, because the first ones I can find for Calhoun County date from 1878.

One source of documentation we haven’t yet looked at is wills.  Many types of courthouse records exist beyond the marriage licenses I’ve already become familiar with.  Most of those are not yet available on-line, though.  So I went to my local Family History Center and ordered a microfilm from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  This is a wonderful resource, and the volunteers are very helpful.  I’m not talking here about the standard Family Search, that lets you search for records on an individual, but about the library of county records.  Here’s a link to the county records for Calhoun County, Georgia.  From here I found the film containing the documents I wanted to review or covering the years I wanted to search, and ordered them through my local Family History Center (soon to be renamed Family Search Centers; you’ll also be able to order and pay for microfilms directly through the Family Search website later this year, and have them shipped to your local Center).

In this case, I had found out about a will for Isabella Cutts that mentioned my great-great grandmother Elizabeth by Googling her name.  This led me to a posting on GenForum from Genealogy.com at http://genforum.genealogy.com/ga/calhoun/messages/39.html that consists of will abstracts of Calhoun County wills.  One thing to remember about will books is that they are transcriptions by a clerk of the court of the original document, and thus should be treated with caution.  However, they are much more reliable generally than an abstraction or a further transcription into print.  In this case, the document, as hard as it is to read, says in part “One share to Mary J. Joiner wife of W. B. Joiner to be hers absolutely and one to Elizabeth W. [sic] Perry wife of W. P. Perry to be hers absolutely” and a little further down it’s made clear that Elizabeth is her daughter, “…... one share shall be given as herein before mentioned to my said daughters each to wit One to Amanda One to Mary J and One to Elizabeth.”

One last point in this rather long post.  I used the wonderful resources at FindAGrave.com to search for William P. Perry and both of his wives.  I found William and Georgia, the first wife, right away, in the Salem Cemetery in Edison, Calhoun County, Georgia.  And there were pictures of their tombstones.  On Georgia’s tombstone it says, “In Memory of Georgia F. Wife of W. P. Perry, Born Nov,. 10, 1849, Died Oct. 21, 1869”.  Secondary and circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but it adds to the weight of the body of evidence.  Elizabeth’s tombstone is actually in Sale City, in Mitchell County.  I’ll have to follow that thread, and deal with Joshua’s tombstone, in the next installment.

Here’s your summary:

• The Family History Center, the Family History Library and Family Search, a closely related set of resources from LDS, are invaluable.  You should find your local Center, and get to know both the individual search and the library search.  The volunteers at your local Center will be glad to help you.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• Accurate official vital records are pretty much a 20^th century invention in Georgia, and enforcement of the requirements was lax until the late 1920’s.  Nevertheless, with perseverance many documents that qualify as primary sources can be found.
• Don’t forget to Google your ancestors’ names.  Yes, you’ll get a lot of chaff, but if you learn to use Advanced Search, and add keywords and place restrictions, you’ll be surprised at what you can find.  Remember, even if you can’t use an index as a primary source it’s still a valuable pointer to the sources themselves.
• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part II

We’re exploring the children and grandchildren of my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884).  Joshua is currently one of my “brick walls” in my family history, showing how I trace my family roots back to him and why I can’t get any farther back.

So far, using the 1920 and 1930 census records, we’ve seen that my grandfather, Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970) was living with his father John I Perry, Sr. (1878-1956) and siblings John I Perry, Jr, Ruth Perry and William P Perry.  The 1920 census shows that my great-grandmother Lyda E [Maxwell] Perry (1890-1922) was living with her family, but that by the 1930 census John Sr was married to Lulamae [Mullis] Perry (1902-1963).

Death certificates are a key type of primary source record.  They establish name and place and date of death.  They are valuable secondary sources for birth and marriage and sometimes a pointer to parentage.  The name, birth date and place, and the names (and possibly birth places) of the parents are supplied by an “informant”, usually a person close to the deceased, ideally a close relative, but the information cannot be regarded as infallible..  At best, use this information as a pointer to finding additional sources, or as additional confirmation of facts that can be sourced elsewhere.

State law did not required death certificates in Georgia until 1914, and it was 1919 before most counties were complying with the law.  But not until 1928 did compliance become universal.  The counties maintain death records; copies began to be filed with the state in 1928.  So you can write the county vital records office directly if you are positive in which county your ancestor died, or you can write the Georgia Division of Public Health.  Their web address is http://health.state.ga.us/programs/vitalrecords/death.asp.  The fee is currently $25 for a certified copy of a death certificate, and there is no option to order a non-certified (genealogical) copy as in some states. 

For relatives who died between 1914 and 1927, a possible alternative source is the website Georgia’s Virtual Vault from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  As with marriage records, the exact dates covered vary by county, and the quality of the digitized images varies as well.  There are two links on the left side of the screen for death certificates: Georgia Death Certificates and Georgia Non-Indexed Death Certificates, 1928-1930 .  There are the usual pages with sources details and a search section at the bottom.  Of the two, the Georgia Death Certificates (covering 1914-1927) is easier to search as there are a number of search options.  Searcing the 1928-1930 images is basically like a digital microfilm search; there is minimal indexing in the images themselves and you almost have to view each image to find the one you are looking for.  The advantage is that you can do this at home in your PJs.  Read the source details pages carefully.  Neither of these image databases is a complete record of extant death certificates.  They are merely copies of the records on file with the state for the covered years.

I used the Georgia’s Virtual Vault web site to find my great-grandmother Lyda Perry’s death certificate (above). It gives her name, age and death, confirming “common family knowledge” that she died in 1922.  She was the wife of John I. Perry, who provided the information on the certificate.  He knew here maiden name (father’s last name) was Maxwell, again a confirmation of what I already knew through family lore, since that is also my grandfather’s middle name (as well as the middle name of one of my brothers).  Unfortunately, for mother’s maiden name they “doo not no” [sic].  She died of “apoplexy” in Sale City, Mitchell County, Georgia on 8 Jan 1922, and was buried in Sale City the next day.  The doctor and undertaker signed the certificate as well.  So there’s a great deal of information here, but also much that is missing.  As you can see by the spaces provided there is much more they could have filled in.  Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t.

I was luckier with my great-grandfather’s death certificate (right).  My mother’s cousin Barbara already had a certified copy obtained from Fulton County and was kind enough to share it with me.  As you can see, the form has changed, but the basic fields are still there, and compliance with the filling out of the form is much improved.  His son William P. Perry (my great uncle Bill) was the informant, and he knew John’s date of birth and his parents names.  John was living in the Atlanta area, died of multiple causes (basically heart attack and pneumonia) at the Army hospital at Ft. McPherson on 7 March 1956.  

As further corroborating evidence, to consider when evaluating the death certificates, you can search out your ancestors' tombstones or grave markers.  I was lucky enough to find the tombstones for both John & Lyda Perry.  Most of the dates on the tombstones agree with the information on the death certificates.  The exception is Lyda’s birthday.  The death certificate gives her age as 31, but the gravestone says she was born in October 1886, which would have made her 35 years old in January 1922.  These two sources aren’t enough to resolve that question, so we’ll have to look for the answer elsewhere.  Both of these gravestone images are from FindAGrave.com, a wonderful resource for locating burial sites around the world, many with pictures of the tombs and gravestones.  There is also the ability to request pictures of volunteers, who graciously help you fill in the blanks in your family records when it’s difficult for you to obtain the pictures yourself.  These pictures of my great-grandparents graves were taken by  Sue Edwards and can be found on the FindAGrave.com website in the Sale City Cemetery, Sale City, Mitchell, Georgia, USA.

So death certificates are available in Georgia for most of the 20^th century.  Just don’t get your hopes up if you’ve done research in other states.  It’s still possible to find them, and there are even a few available for free.  And it doesn't hurt to add burial information from the graves of your relatives.  As we go back prior to the start of the last century, though, documentation gets scarcer, and a great deal of detective work is required.  I’ll continue with my Joshua tree in the next installment.

Here’s your summary:

• Georgia’s Virtual Vault is a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In it you can find a number of documents that qualify as primary sources of information.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• Accurate official vital records are pretty much a 20^th century invention in Georgia, and enforcement of the requirements was lax until the late 1920’s.  Nevertheless, with perseverance many documents that qualify as primary sources can be found.
• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part I

Last week I mentioned my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884).  Joshua is currently one of my “brick walls” in my family history.  I’ll come back to him again and again, so I’ll start with what I’ve found out that leads me back to him and why I can’t get any farther back.

My grandfather was Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970).  Though I haven’t yet gotten copies of my parents birth certificates from them (they are still living), I have little doubt of this.  So though I haven’t yet documented this link, it’s a given.  And starting with my grandfather we immediately come up against a problem in researching family history in Georgia.  The state of Georgia did not require birth and death certificates until 1919, and compliance was spotty until at least 1928, and not universal until the 1930’s (Red book: American state, county & town sources by Alice Eichholz;1992, Ancestry Publishing, p 147; link is to Google Books).  There were a few larger cities who required birth and/or death certificates as early as 1880’s, but my Perry clan lived in rural southwest Georgia.  Another great source would be family Bibles with contemporaneously recorded births and deaths, but so far I’ve had no luck locating such volumes.

This leaves me with secondary sources.  My initial guide for the ancestors of my grandfather were family memories of my mother and her cousin, and some family trees put together early in the 20^th century by some of their aunts and great-aunts.  Since I can’t document these relationships with primary sources I am forced to rely on secondary sources, census records, marriage records, tombstones and newspaper accounts.  In the case of my Perry family the census records have proved invaluable.  The census is of course not 100% reliable, but when you add the weight of multiple census years to your other sources you can come to some pretty reliable conclusions about lines of descent. 

I can find my grandfather on both the 1930 and 1920 censuses; he was born after the 1910 census was taken.  From these two I can get his siblings’ names (John I Jr, Ruth and William P; Uncle Bill was listed as William T in the 1920 census, but that’s a perfect example of how you must treat information on the census forms as valuable, but in need of verification).  From these two forms I also get confirmation of the fact that my great-grandmother (Lyda) was living in 1920, but that my grandfather had remarried by 1930 (to Lula M).  If I go back one more decade I can find my great-grandparents living together on the 1910 census.  I happen to know that great-grandmother Lyda had in fact died and that my great-grandfather John Isaiah Perry married Lula Mae Mullis.  Proving it becomes interesting.

(Remember, you can click on these images to see a larger one.)

I’ve mentioned before the website Georgia’s Virtual Vault from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In addition to the Confederate Pension records we looked at last week they have digitized copies of most of the surviving marriage books from the State of Georgia through the early 1900’s.  The exact dates covered vary by county, and the quality of the digitized images varies as well.  But it does save a lot of driving (or writing) to obtain copies of the marriage records registered with the county offices.  

 Just click on the Marriage Records from Microfilm link on the left side of the screen.  This brings up the page with an explanation of the sources of the microfilmed books and a search section at the bottom.  These books are not digitally indexed, so the Advanced Search isn’t useful here.  I generally select the county I want to look in and click Search, which brings me to a page listing all the marriage books available for the selected county.  Drawing on family history again, I know that my Lyda Ellen Maxwell (my great-grandmother) was from Decatur County, so that is where I believe she was married.  The problem is that the Decatur County marriage books on the Virtual Vault website end with 1905.  Checking into Mitchell County, I can see marriage books for 1867 through 1928 for White residents (1909-1924 for African American licenses), but though I’ve searched I can’t find a license issued to John I Perry for either marriage in Mitchell County.  So I’ll have to order these licenses or wait until I can go search for them myself.

There are a couple of things to notice here.  First, white and African American (or “colored”) marriage licenses were recorded in separate books in most counties well into the 20^th century.  This is another legacy of the Civil War, and evidence of the legal segregation practiced throughout much of society after the War ended.  Second, the microfilms of the marriage books in Mitchell County don’t start until 1867.  One reason could be that the books just weren’t microfilmed when the others were.  Often you can find indexes to these books, and in some cases you can find the microfilms on the Family History Library website and order them through your local Family History Center.  But sometimes the records simply no longer exist.  Every state has counties that have suffered the loss of records because of fire or flood at the county courthouse.  In the South, however, particularly in Georgia, fire is a particularly pervasive cause of the loss of county records.  In a few instances it was the actions of Union troops, but there have been reports and suppositions that some residents of some counties burned the records themselves, figuring that the Yankees couldn’t tax what they didn’t know about!

In Part II of My Joshua Tree, I’ll look at Death Certificates.

Here’s your summary:

• Georgia’s Virtual Vault is a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In it you can find a number of documents that qualify as primary sources of information.
• Google Books can be a great resource.  They have digitized many genealogy books, and even if only part of the book is searchable it can save you a trip to a library or a purchase/search if you can check whether the book contains information pertinent to your search.  The also sell digital copies of many books, provide links to purchasing sources, and link to WorldCat to make a library search quick and convenient.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• I'm not doing a "Genealogy 101" because many other do the introductory teaching so much better.  There are many books, but I've also been enjoying the pod casts from Lisa Louise Cooke, Family History: Genealogy Made Easy.  They are very informative, even if you've been involved in family history for a while.  For internet research tips, I've been reading Genealogy Online, Eighth Edition, by Elizabeth Powell Crowe (2008, McGraw Hill) and can highly recommend it.  I got my copy from the local Barnes & Nobel, but Amazon.com also has it.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim