Digging Up Your Family

Cemetery Repair!

A few weeks ago I was in the City Cemetery here in McDonough, Georgia looking for the headstone of Cornelia Tomlinson, as requested by a descendant. I walked all over the section and eventually found her.

 

 

 

 

This absolutely, positively breaks my heart.

At first I was just angry at the city for allowing this to happen.

Second, I called around until I had a meeting with the mayor.

Then I had a meeting with the city administrator.

Now I have the go-ahead to start repairing the old section of the city cemetery, and will be researching and contacting as many descendants of the folk interred there as I can.

And that last part is kind of important. Apparently, a few years ago they were going to work on repairing the headstones. Some guy rode up and started yelling at them to get off his property. In the city cemetery. For someone that was buried. He didn’t want the stone fixed (it’s really mind-blowing, right?).

I will not only be charting the cemetery and doing repairs (with the help of a few people, and possibly some of the kids who like to destroy cemeteries –basically giving them a reason to stop and regret), but I will also be making headstones for two unknown people:

 

…as well as offer headstones for the people buried in the paupers section.

For more information on the two unidentified people, I found THIS LINK.

I will soon provide a donation link on Digging Up Your Family, as well as at The Georgia Anna Project, if anyone is interested in donating towards supplies needed for the memorial stones.

This doesn’t mean I will no longer be researching my family! It’s in my blood!

What I Have Been Doing Lately

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!

Wordless Wednesday: Skullbone, Gibson County, Tennessee

Skullbone, Gibson County, Tennessee.

Wordless Wednesday: Hurricane Mills, Tn

RB Maxwell’s 5-10-25c McDonough, Georgia

The other night I was looking through all of the old newspapers that I have strewn around the guest bedroom, and I discovered a flier for RB Maxwell’s, a dime store that used to be in McDonough, Henry County, Georgia.  The flier was printed in 1943 and was an advertisement for clothing patterns.  I started wondering where in McDonough the store had been and when I voiced this thought everyone said probably at the town square.  BUT, I knew that I could find someone to tell me exactly where it had been.  So I went to Bell, Book and Candle, a little used book store that can be found just off the square in an old mill building just behind (under?) an antique store.  The floor of Bell, Book and Candle still has markers on the floor where lumber would be measured before being cut, and tin, too, for roofs.  Anyway, I knew that Dan Brooks, one of the authors of Haunted Memories of McDonough, Georgia (written to go with The McDonough Haunted History Tour), would be up at the bookstore and he would be able to tell me where the dime store had been.  I had forgotten my digital recorder and my notebook, so I didn’t ask many questions, but I did get pictures.

From what I understand RB Maxwell’s started out just south of the town square on Macon Street.  However, since they weren’t getting much business they ended up moving onto the square.  Dan’s cousin used to work there, so after he called her he was able to give an exact location of the last place the dime store had been.  Prior to the move onto the square he knew that it was over next to where Colonial Grocery Store had been, he just couldn’t remember which store front exactly.

Just south of the town square, looking south down Macon Street.  The dime store was first in one of these store fronts. 

Just south of the town square, looking north down Macon street.  I think Colonial Grocery was the grey store front on the far left in the picture. 

I think this was Colonial Grocery.

The east side of the town square looking south.  This is The Image Doctor, a photo restoration business.  This used to be RB Maxwell’s.  This is two doors down from the old movie theater. 

North looking view of The Image Doctor.  I was pretty pleased to see a photo restoration business here.  I have a photo of my great-grandmother that is just crumbling away.  I need to bring it to them and see if they can save it!  The tall end of the building used to be the movie theater.

 

Hopefully I have all of the information correct.  There isn’t much, but sadly I didn’t think about my recorder or notebook until I pulled into the parking lot.  Next time I have questions I will need to remember to take them with me!