1. I had purchased several hundred photos on eBay that all turned out to be a family collection. After hunting around for a while I finally found the family to which they belong. I scanned roughly 70 of the photographs and mailed those off to the family on Tuesday. In the coming weeks I will scan the rest of them so I can get those mailed off, too. I am extremely happy that I found the family, and I am extremely happy that they are getting their precious heirlooms back. I had started a blog regarding the photos just in case I wasn’t able to find family. I will be keeping it going so you can check it out here.
2. My mom and I went up to Tennessee to visit with family again. After picking up Great-Aunt Kat we drove up to Clarksville to visit Grandmother and Granddaddy’s graves. Then we drove down to Hurricane Mills (our usual spot) and visited with Donny and Bobbie. We didn’t stay long because Bobbie wasn’t feeling well (luckily she is feeling much better now). While there we had decided that instead of buying Nan Nan’s fried pies from Cissie Lynn’s store, we would go to Nan Nan’s store and buy them directly from her. After driving out of our way (you can tell from the start of this that it ended badly) we got to the location only to find out that the location was moved. The sign (of which I wish I had taken a photo) gave the address of the new location and said to stop in and visit. So we drove even further out of the way. Come to find out the new location was the original location: the owner’s home. She (I assume Nan Nan, but it might just be named Nan Nan by using her grandmother’s recipe or something) was not pleased to see us. She seemed to be miffed that we pulled into her driveway. After telling us she didn’t really have many pies to sell I asked her if she took credit cards. No, she said, she didn’t even take them at the other location. By now I was angry. Their website (which is just their Facebook page from what I can tell) didn’t have the new address listed which caused the looooong drive. They also didn’t have payment options on the page, so I didn’t know I should have stopped for cash. But in the end, you know what? Her attitude ruined the entire thing anyway. Had she been more pleasant I may have considered driving out to an ATM and getting cash just to buy a fried pie. Will I ever purchase another Nan Nan’s Homemade Fried Pie again? Nope. (I just checked out the Facebook page, and they now have that they don’t accept credit cards and failed to use spell check…ok, that’s just me being bitter and mean)
3. A couple of weeks ago my mom and I got to meet new cousins who live here in Georgia: Valerie Craft and her mom Ruby! Valerie has the genealogy blog Begin With Craft, which is chock-full of great information and research tips. Due to the shared Craft surname we think that may be how we are related. Through DNA Valerie’s father matches up to Great-Aunt Kat an estimated 4th cousin. That means to find out how they are related we would need to go back to, at the very least, Prestly Ezekiel Craft’s father. I think it has been figured out that his name was John Craft (don’t hold me to that because I am not positive). Kat’s Craft family goes back:
Henry Corbit Craft (1895 TN-1971 TN)
John Craft (1859 TN-1936 TN)
Thomas Craft (abt 1810 NC-aft 1880 TN)
Prestly Ezekiel Craft (abt 1786 NC-btwn 1850 and 1860 TN)
Several people have that Prestly married his wife Mary Thaxton in Surry County, North Carolina. I guess I will have to look into that more.
4. My mom and I are getting ready for the Bondurant Family Association Annual Meeting next week. I’m pretty excited about it!
5. I recently applied to go back to school. I have thought about it for a while, and now with the imminent closing of the Georgia Archives to the public I decided to just do it! I applied to American Public University online school for history. Who knows, maybe I will eventually become an archivist!
6. In my genealogy research I am currently working on (ready for this? It’s like it is never-ending!):
-Who are Peter McQueen’s parents? It really is driving me crazy not knowing. The earliest I can find him is on an 1818 bill of sale for a slave named Daniel. Peter doesn’t appear on any census record (by name at least) until 1840, though.
-What happened to Spencer DeMumbrie? When and where did he die? Where is he buried? Why is he being difficult?
-Why am I unable to locate James Franklin Stalls’s grave in Oak Grove Cemetery in Paducah, McCracken County, Kentucky? His obituary says he is there, but there is no record of him as being buried there.
-Is the research I did on Brett’s Murphy family correct? It seems perfectly logical to me, but I was presented with something extremely different that is completely illogical to me.
-The Craft line (as mentioned above).
-The search for Eppy Willhite Craft’s death record. I will have to write a whole post for this fun headache. Let’s just say that no one is actually sure of her first name anymore, and her death cannot be found (and she had to have died unless she’s still alive at the ripe old age of about 150 years-old…which you never know, I guess).
-William Glenn Cathey: where are you buried exactly?
-Amanda Summers: when, where and how did you die and where are you buried? Oh, and who exactly is Lizzie’s father? Or do you not even know?
-And let’s just say many other research subjects, such as who are the parents of John B Smith? Where exactly was Elizabeth Brownlee from? Where is the Stalls family from? And many, many more questions.
I’m going to go watch movies now!
