African American ancestry Tag

20 Jul

Posted at 11:54h in Newsletter

GENEALOGY- MORE ON THE SMITHERS My Great-Great Grandfather Gabriel Neil Smither served in the Confederate Army. He enlisted at age 17 on March 10, 1862, at Oxford, Mississippi for one year. Less than a month later he reenlisted for three years or the duration of the war. He served with the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, Co G. Lamar Rifles (pictured below in Oxford). His regiment was involved in both Confederate excursions into the North with Antietam and Gettysburg. He participated in Lee's Virginia Peninsula campaign and during 1862 was present at Seven Pines (May 31-June1), Gaine's Farm (June 27th), White Oak Swamp...

29 Jun

Posted at 17:39h in Newsletter

GENEALOGIST- MORE ON THE SMITHERS OF HUNTSVILLE In the last edition, I shared my Smither ancestor’s store accounts book, John Smither, which showed Sam Houston’s debts, and that our client, who is Houston’s second cousin five times removed, paid off Sam’s debt. As a genealogist, I received a copy of the Smither account book from James Patton, the long-time Walker County Clerk, who found the ledger amidst the many stacks of books and papers in his office when my oldest daughter and I stopped by to meet him. James was ever the gentleman and spent some time chatting about the early days of...

20 May

Posted at 08:41h in Newsletter

GENEALOGY- HEARTBREAK FOR A FUTURE PRESIDENT We visited the Cornwall Furnace National Monument in central Pennsylvania. There was a personal interest as my wife and my son-in-law’s (they’re tenth cousins) many times Great Uncle Peter Grubb (c.1702—1754), founded the Grubb Family Iron Dynasty in 1737, developed Cornwall Iron Mines and established Cornwall Iron Furnace, together there were one of the largest ironworks in Colonial Pennsylvania. The Cornwall Iron Mines are the largest U.S. iron mines ever discovered east of Lake Superior. Another early industrialist, Robert Coleman (pictured below), later known as Pennsylvania’s first millionaire, acquired a 1/6 interest in the Cornwall Furnace...

19 Apr

Posted at 13:25h in Newsletter

ANCESTRY- WILLIAM COOPER, DANIEL BOONE, AND SIR ALEX Years ago, while researching one of our clients’ ancestors, I came across his sixth great-grandfather, William Cooper. I reported on that in 2021. Included below are some recently discovered excerpts documented by a Scotsman. William was an Indian Trader who lived amongst the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee. In May 1769, Daniel Boone and General James Robertson  (pictured bottom left) first set out for Kentucky from Hillsborough, NC, with William Cooper (Cool) as his guide, when the firm of Cohen & Isaacs hired him to survey lands that eventually formed Kentucky and Tennessee. In...

05 Apr

Posted at 11:34h in Newsletter

GENEALOGIST- WHAT'S THE REAL STORY? More on Addison Smith, whom we covered in the last edition. According to family legend, Addison was a graduate of West Point and a member of a surveying team that mapped the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest. Like many legends, this one has evolved and been retold with changes to the story over the years. While West Point existed in Lewis and Clark’s time, Addison was not born until 1841. So, I set out to see what I could find. I discovered a May 1902 article that discussed how “Captain J. Addison Smith...

22 Mar

Posted at 13:58h in Newsletter

GENEALOGY- DID GRANDPA INVENT THE POTATO CHIP? In a couple of recent editions, we covered the legends surrounding Tom Smith. His father, John Addison Smith IV, had his own amazing stories that I discovered while working on their genealogy. According to legend, Addison was a dreamer, a gambler, and an inventor. It was said that Addison went “through three fortunes in his lifetime”. He claimed one of his inventions was the “potato chip.” I researched the history of the potato chip, and references to it began to appear in cookbooks from 1817 to 1832. Since Addison was not born in 1841, the story...

12 Mar

Posted at 12:54h in Newsletter

ANCESTORS- YOUR 3X GREAT UNCLE DIES, AND HE'S REPLACED BY A LINCOLN CONSPIRATOR Suppose you were planning to visit Dry Tortugas National Park and were interested in whether you would come across headstones, gravestones, markers, or cenotaphs. In that case, this is the response you would get from AI: The only identified gravestone at Dry Tortugas National Monument belongs to a man named John Greer, a laborer who died at Fort Jefferson on November 5, 1861, and whose headstone was discovered underwater by archaeologists. However, AI has not visited the Dry Tortugas, as we came across one of our client’s third Great-Uncles,...

22 Feb

Posted at 17:01h in Newsletter

ANCESTRY- THE SOCIETY OF PRESIDENTIAL DESCENDANTS GATHER AGAIN A year ago, we attended a panel of the Society of Presidential Descendants on President’s Day weekend at the Truman Little White House- 2024 Society of Presidential Descendants We enjoyed it enough to go again this year. In addition to the descendants of Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Cleveland, we also had a descendant of Grant and Teddy Roosevelt in attendance this year. Here are some of the tidbits from the panel: Ulysses Grant Dietz told us of the irony in that General Grant, who became the Union Army soldier most responsible for ending the scourge of...

08 Feb

Posted at 14:52h in Newsletter

GENEALOGIST- THE ANABAPTIST PRESIDENTS In our last edition, we discussed Anabaptist beliefs and our visit to the Behalt Anabaptists Now, we will visit which presidents were raised as Anabaptists and how their early spiritual lives may have influenced them. There were three presidents all Republican from Hoover through Nixon, and their terms were only interrupted by Democrats FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. The picture to the right shows Eisenhower, Nixon (foreground), and Hoover behind them. The 1953 picture of Eisenhower's inauguration at the bottom shows Hoover behind the Chief Justice and VP Nixon to the right of Eisenhower. The three of them, including Truman,...

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