Genealogist for hire- March 20, 2021

20 Mar Genealogist for hire- March 20, 2021

Posted at 15:52h in Newsletter by Dan

FILIBUSTERS

Contents

1 WE HAVE HEARD A LOT LATELY ABOUT FILIBUSTERS. DID YOU KNOW THE WORD EVOLVED FROM A TERM FOR BUCCANERING AND THEN FOR FOMENTING INSURRECTION (NOW ANOTHER TOO FAMILIAR TERM)?
2 UNITED AMERICA SMITH
3
4 EVER HEAR OF THE FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT?
5
6 HIS ANCESTORS WERE GERMAN KINGS. HE WANTS THEIR TREASURES BACK
7
8
9 THE FEVER THAT STRUCK NEW YORK!

WE HAVE HEARD A LOT LATELY ABOUT FILIBUSTERS. DID YOU KNOW THE WORD EVOLVED FROM A TERM FOR BUCCANERING AND THEN FOR FOMENTING INSURRECTION (NOW ANOTHER TOO FAMILIAR TERM)?

Originally, the Spanish form filibustero applied to French, Dutch, and English privateers and buccaneers infesting the Spanish American coasts, with whom Spain was constantly at war. However, it was later applied to the military expeditions of Narciso López in Cuba, who fomented a revolution, and liberated the island from Spanish rule.

It designated American adventurer William Walker who, influenced by López, launched several filibustering campaigns in former Spanish colonies in Central America. So the definition became specifically “an American engaged in fomenting insurrections in Latin America in the mid-19th century” (1851). Subsequently, the word entered American political slang with the meaning “to obstruct or delay legislation by dilatory motions or other artifices” (1861).

UNITED AMERICA SMITH

We tend to think that society has never been polarized. United America was born in 1798. Did her parents choose that name for her in celebration of America becoming United, or was it hoping that America would become more United?

America (known as just ‘Mec”) went on to marry her distant cousin William Hunter Smith. He was one of the wealthiest men in Rutherford County. They had no children of their own. Mec’s sister, Julia Granville Smith, married Fontaine Posey Crockett, and they had four young children when both of them died. William Hunter Smith (called “Uncle Billy” in the family) and “Aunt” Mec adopted the children and raised them as their own.

Sara Catherine Crockett also called ‘Kitty,’ was one of those children and was by all accounts one of her uncle’s favorites. When she finally chose to marry Francis Whiting Washington, William Hunter wrote an impassioned letter to her along the lines of ‘Don’t marry that man!’. In the end, they did marry, and William Hunter Smith gave the mansion ‘Springfield’ along with land and slaves to them as a wedding gift.

Kitty held her aunt and uncle in such high esteem that they named two of their children for them – William Hunter Washington, who went on to a distinguished career in law and politics, and United America Isabella Washington, who died as a young child and is also buried in the family cemetery.

EVER HEAR OF THE FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT?

The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One. The FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides (as shown on right), city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, and children’s books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians.

Look up your 1930’s ancestors and see if anything was written about them during the depression: https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/about-this-collection/

There is also a series of revealing slave narratives:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/