Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Whispers From The Past

Welcome to my blog.  I hope you find something interesting. 
                 I  look forward to hearing from you.

Like the faint flutter of butterfly wings, a whisper comes into your thoughts.  While exploring the history of your family, have you had that experience where you feel like someone is calling out to you, leading you in a certain direction against all odds, trying to tell you something?  It’s as if they want to be found.  They want you to tell their story.  Many genealogists I speak with admit to having this experience.

I’ve had this happen to me twice in my research.  Usually you’re dealing with hard, dry facts on a piece of paper:  an old census record listing names and ages, a deed from the early 1800s, a certain fact from known history.  But then you get the feeling that there is something else.  You feel as if someone is trying to tell you something, if only you could get it.

The first time this happened to me I was a rank beginner.  I knew nothing about genealogy.  I had no teacher.  Every now and then I would wish I could do that, what I saw and read others were doing.  I was a certified history nut, so it looked fascinating to me, but it also looked complicated and I figured it would be too difficult.  So I just put these thoughts aside.

I did not come from a family of story tellers.  In fact my parents NEVER talked about the past.  Not that they were hiding anything – they just didn’t seem to be interested in history, in the past.  My grandparents and my aunts and uncles were the same.  I never heard them telling stories about the past.  When I got a little further along in school, I would have a question about where we came from, what was our heritage, were we English, or French, or German?  I would get only very vague answers.  They weren't avoiding, they just didn’t know much about their past.  Then the TV show ROOTS came out.  I so envied those people.  There they were – slaves – such a dark past.  But they had sat on their front porches and told their stories, and told their stories, and all the family knew where they had come from, what they had endured, and WHO they were.  And there I was – nice comfortable past, no horror stories, and I knew NOTHING!  I was ashamed and I was MAD!

I had exactly two pieces of information:  (1) my mother’s father had said that they (PARKERs) were Scots Irish, and (2) my father said that his family (HAYWOODs) had “come from the west!”  (It later turned out that both of these things were true.)  I didn’t  know any names back beyond my immediate grandparents.  My father did know that his grandfather (no name) had gone off to the civil war and had never come home.  That was all the family ever knew about him! 

It was certainly a lost cause, but as I got older I wanted to get into it and see what was there, but didn’t know where to start.  Then suddenly one day I was contacted by someone I did not know.  She was the daughter of a cousin I had been close to when I was a young child.  Our family, besides not being interested in history, didn’t have reunions and such to keep in touch.  We were close when I was small, and all the extended family lived in the Charlotte, NC area,.  Our families visited on Sunday afternoon, had big dinners at Grandma’s house.  Cousins had sleepovers.  But as time went on, children got older and developed their own lives, families moved about the state, they didn’t stay close.  Everyone seemed to be independent, going their own way, doing their own thing.  We lost touch.

So I was surprised when I heard from Darlene.  Her father had been my close cousin Al Parker.  He had died young at age 49 she told me.  I was shocked and saddened.  I didn’t know that.  It pressed home how much we had all grown apart.  Not only did we not know our past, we didn’t even know our present!  Darlene was into genealogy.  She was working on the PARKERs.  She wanted personal stories, to know all I could tell her about my grandparents, which were her great grandparents.  How shockingly that brought home the feeling of passing time.  It was so recent for me, but so in the past for her.  Made me feel that time was slipping away FAST! 

Darlene and I became very close, constantly on the phone or Email.  I dredged my brain for every tiny personal memory I had about Harvey M. and Blanche Arant PARKER.  And she encouraged me to delve into my HAYWOODs.  She forced me to start.  And I did.

My sister and I dug out my mother’s bible which was stored away in “the cedar chest,”  which every old southern family has, stuffed full of mementos that had meant something to my mother.  In that bible we found a piece of paper which we had never seen, that listed my father’s family, his brothers and sisters, his parents (I knew these names but they had both died before I was born, so I never knew them – they were just names to me,) and wonder of wonders – there were the names of my father’s grandparents which I had never seen before:  JOSIAH and MARGARET ALEXANDER HAYWOOD.  I had a starting point!

I lived in Florida then, but as soon as I could, I went to Monroe, county seat of Union Co. NC, to the N. C. History Room in the Court House.  All my lines are situated in Union Co. and Mecklenburg Co, out of which Union was formed in 1842.  I went to the Register of Deeds office, looking for anything I could find in the land records.  The end result was that I found Josiah.  I found a marriage bond for him and Margaret Alexander dated 8 JAN 1850.  I found some deeds with his name and other Haywood names.  I was so proud of myself!  But I did not find his father and mother. I had found the name Catherine, but could not connect with it.

In a file in the History Room I had also found the name of a woman in Florence, SC who was researching HAYWOODs.  None of her names were familiar to me.  But she had traced her line back to a John Franklin HAYWOOD and his mother was Catherine.  I wrote her, explaining my dilemma.  She replied and was very nice, but she was certain that her Catherine could not be my Catherine, because there was no other information about her Catherine.  She had no other connections for John Franklin!

I agonized and agonized over this, because somehow I knew that this was MY Catherine.  My butterfly wings were working overtime.  I just knew she belonged to me.  It was like a psychic thing.  Somehow, with no facts whatsoever, I absolutely KNEW that this was my Catherine.  Peggy and I became avid communicators over many months.  She was almost ready to publish her book on her HAYWOODs.  She did her line back to John Franklin and I kept working on my line back to Josiah.  Well, in the long run, we finally discovered that John Franklin and Josiah were brothers, and Catherine was their mother.  We found their names together on old deeds.  We turned out to be cousins.  So we added my line to her book and she published it, and we became good friends as well as cousins. 

So never give up when you absolutely BELIEVE that someone is yours.  Listen to those whispers!  Accept that they are reaching out to you.  Keep on digging until the truth appears – even if it turns out not to be exactly what you wanted.  You got the correct facts for your story – and wasn’t the trip FUN!

How we found the husband of Catherine is another odd story for another day.  Along with the story of how Josiah got lost, after all the work I did to find him.  Coming up in future blogs.
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Robert Carpenter has announced his annual class for Beginning Genealogy at Gaston College in Dallas, NC.  Starting Thursday Sept. 19 through Nov. 21, 2013 (10 sessions) from 7 - 9 p.m. on Thursday nights.  WHO SHOULD SIGN UP?  Any person interested in learning about genealogical research regardless of your level of experience.  Emphasis will involve research strategies, introducing students to various sources, deciphering documents, and will conclude with a trip to the State Archives in Raleigh.  Anyone with questions about signing up should contact Robert  by email at  rcarpenter2@charter.net.  As one who has been there, I can tell you this is a marvelous class for beginners and intermediates.  Robert is considered to be one of the foremost historians for Lincoln and Gaston Counties, and his head is full of wonderful genealogical "stuff!"  He is currently a professor of history at Belmont Abbey College.  SIGN UP by contacting Gaston College at 704-922-6251 or 704-922-6353 or Email Beth Hollars at hollars.beth@gaston.edu.  They are busy running all over the school so be persistent in calling.  If you leave your number, they will come back to you.

Robert has an Advanced Genealogy Class of 10 sessions starting late in January each year.  This class is so popular that students say that "they have failed" so that they can return each year, and there is a bunch who return again and again to  experience the class once more.  Take if from one who has "failed" over and over in order to take the class again.  And I'll be there again in January!
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Very exciting things happening in my little Genealogy world.  This is the beginnings of my new genealogy blog.  Second posting.  In future writings I will ponder the mysteries we all pursue in research, meander through my mind where whispers of long passed relatives reach out to me, and get down to the "nitty-gritty" hard work involved in this endeavor called GENEALOGY.  Hope you find it interesting and come back to me if you have comments on these subjects or find some connection in my family lines.  See My Family Lines tab at the top.
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We have a genealogy forum every Tuesday in Belmont, NC.  If you live nearby, come join us from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., at the J.Paul Ford Recreation Center at 37 E. Woodrow Ave.  Right now, once a month our meeting is devoted to learning to make short personal videos to be inserted into family trees, facebook postings, blogs, YouTube, etc. Our resident guru Jim Antley is teaching us loads of new talents.  During other meetings we explore all aspects of genealogy research including storage possibilities, story telling/sharing, genealogy technology, brickwall help, etc .  You can find us at: http://belmontgenealogyclub.blogspot.com/ .  Of course, when a member in the group needs help, or if someone new comes along with a problem, a "brickwall" or such, we drop what we are doing and all jump in  to explore with them.  Lots of fun!
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There is also a new Genealogy Group formed in Gastonia, NC.  They meet the first Thursday of the month in the NC History Room, second floor, at the main Gaston Public Library on Garrison Street in Gastonia.  Meeting time 7:00 - 8:30. NOTE:  Because the 4th of July  falls on the first Thursday in July, this particular meeting will back up to the 27th of June.  Thereafter it will always fall on the first Thursday.  Linda Klocker who has had previous groups in Belmont and in Mountain Island Lake will be leading this new venture.  Whether you are a beginner or an experienced researcher, come meet the group.  There was a nice turnout for the first meeting last week.
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There is an interesting bit of information from the folks at Ancestry Insider.  It is about what Ancestry.com is thinking about for the future to improve our researching capabilities.

The Ancestry Insider
The unofficial, unauthorized view of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The Ancestry Insider reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these two websites and associated topics. The author attempts to fairly and evenly support both.

After reading the Post click on The Ancestry Insider at the top of the page to go to the blog home page. There are several other Posts you may find interesting.


Wednesday, June 12, 2013

My Dad Bill

  Welcome to my blog.  I hope you find something interesting. 
      I  look forward to hearing from you.

Sgt. L. G. Haywood    c. 1920
Original Photo in possession of the author
This a photo of my dad Bill about the time he came home from France, after WW I.

Father’s Day is coming up, and it got me to thinking about my father, Bill.  Bill was not his true name though; his name was Lawrence Grady Haywood.  How he came up with this “Bill” name is a mystery to the family.  And as is usual in genealogy research, back when he was with us, we never thought to ask him to explain.  Children don’t think of those questions – it is just  “WHAT IS.”  By the time you wonder about these things, people are gone, and there is no one to ask.  We do know how it came about.  When he came back home from serving in France in World War I, instead of returning to his previous existence on his father’s farm in Waxhaw, just southeast of Charlotte NC,  he settled in Charlotte  - the only one of his family to “go to town.”  His relatives always thought highly of him because he changed his destiny and left the farm.  He was the only one of his large family to do so.

It was 1920 and he was 27 years old.  He found a job at McClaren Rubber Company,
a tire builder the census said.  (He worked at McClaren for 15 years, until the financial
crash and great depression took his job away in 1935.)  He also found a place to stay
at Mrs. Lilly Chamber’s boarding house.    That first night in the boarding house, when
all the residents had gathered for dinner, they asked him what his name was, what they 
should call this new neighbor of theirs.  He said “just call me Bill!”  They did and he was 
called Bill for the rest of his life.  No one ever knew him as Lawrence again except
for his family down in Waxhaw.  When the telephone rang and someone asked for
“Uncle Lawrence”, we knew it was a call from Waxhaw.

We have pondered on why he did this.  There was no history of the name “Bill” in his family line.  He had no “William” name to base it on.  My sister offered the suggestion that maybe it was a nickname he had acquired while in the army, maybe his buddies had called him that.  This is plausible.  And it is the only plausible theory we have. 

Nevertheless, this is the story of My Dad Bill, and how he got his name.  And besides, the name “Larry” would just not have fit at all!

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Very exciting things happening in my little Genealogy world.  This is the beginning of my new blog.  First posting.  In future writings I will ponder the mysteries we all pursue in research, meander through my mind where whispers of long passed relatives reach out to me, and get down to the "nitty-gritty" hard work involved in this endeavor called GENEALOGY.  Hope you find it interesting and come back to me if you have comments on these subjects or find some connection in my family lines.  See My Family Lines tab at the top.

 We have a genealogy forum every Tuesday in Belmont, NC.  If you live nearby, come join us from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., at the J.Paul Ford Recreation Center at 37 E. Woodrow Ave.  Right now, once a month our meeting is devoted to learning to make short personal videos to be inserted into family trees, facebook postings, blogs, etc. Our resident guru Jim Antley is teaching us loads of new talents.  During other meetings we explore all aspects of genealogy research.  Of course, when a member in the group needs help, or if someone new comes along with a problem, a "brickwall" or such, we drop what we are doing and all jump in  to explore with them.  Lots of fun!

There is also a new Genealogy Group formed in Gastonia, NC.  They meet the first Thursday of the month in the NC History Room, second floor, at the main Gaston Public Library on Garrison Street in Gastonia.  Meeting time 7:00 - 8:30. NOTE:  Because the 4th of July  falls on the first Thursday in July, this particular meeting will back up to the 27th of June.  Thereafter it will always fall on the first Thursday.  Linda Klocker who has had previous groups in Belmont and in Mountain Island Lake will be leading this new venture.  Whether you are a beginner or an experienced searcher, come meet the group.

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There was a very valuable webinar presented on Legacy Family Tree recently entitled “Google Search Strategies for Common Surnames.”  I thought it would be mostly about various Surnames, but it was not at all what I expected.  It was entirely about “operators” which you can insert with the information you put in the search box to pare down the results you get to a manageable amount.  It lets you bring up the most informative subjects and blogs for your own personal need.  I think anyone would find it immensely useful.  If you are a member of Legacy you can pull it up from the webinar archives at: