Doing it a Little Different - Family History Research

I know, I haven't been here a while.  Life has a way of interfering with our fun, eh?  Finding jobs, finding places to live, getting the daily necessities.   Kinda' like what our ancestors faced on a daily basis.

Still, even when vast amounts of things are being thrown my way, I still try and cram in a little research for a few minutes a day.  Especially rewarding is finding out special info on how my way back family members lived and dealt with the problems of their daily lives.

And I've made a few interesting discoveries about the ancestors on my mother's side.

They weren't very obedient souls and didn't feel it necessary to to do everything the way everyone else does.

Kinda' like me!  Not for me is the collecting of names and dates only.  I am looking for information about the people and the way they lived.  Why did they decide to do the things they did?  What was it like to live when and where they did?  Out there on the world wide web are repositories and blogs with photos and notes that put my people and their places in context.  And it's easy to find.  Just Google your ancestor's name and maybe a date but be sure to write "genealogy" in with your other search information. You can come up with all kinds of family history goodies!

  Fortunately, many other family history researchers have posted their notes online.  From my Google searches I've been able to find a book referring to my ancestors on Google Books or Internet Archive.  Internet Archive is great because the books and other scanned objects are past their copyright and can be downloaded in their complete form.

Then there are the blogs and web pages where others have posted photos when they have traveled to historic places, like Cogswell's Grant.  This is land in Essex, Mass “Granted to Mr. John Cogswell 300 acres of land at the further Chebokoe…” Chebokoe was an early name for the Essex River.

Here is a photo of the Essex River from Cogswell's Grant posted by Sue on her blog "Life Looms Large."

http://lifeloomslarge.blogspot.com/2009/06/cogswells-grant.html

I may not get to go out to visit Cogswell's Grant for a while, so it's nice to be able to see pics and info about the places my ancestors lived.

Then there's the things they did, like being fined for falling asleep in church!  My many times great grandfather Samuel Bennett "...were presented in court for being 'Common sleepers in church' and fined each two shillings and a sixpence."  This happened in 1644 in Essex Mass and you can read more about Samuel Bennett and family on the Phillip Roach Heritage page on Family Tree Maker's Home Pages. 

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/r/o/a/Susan-B-Roach/BOOK-0001/0002-0017.html

Phillip Roach did a great job with his family tree notes and was kind enough to post them for the rest of us to read. All I did to find this was write "Samuel Bennett Rhode Island" in Google search and I learned something interesting about an ancestor.

Here we have "The Bennett Family: 1628 - 1910" from the Internet Archive.  This is a down loadable book.  The nice thing about this is the family genealogist can download and read later or print out the pertinent pages they might find.

http://www.archive.org/details/bennettfamily16200benn

Go to Internet Archive, and in their search window select "American Texts" and write in the family name you are looking for.

And then there was Robert Wheaton...

“Robert was a very strong Baptist, and it was because he would not or did not agree with the Puritan way that he was considered a rebel. He had landed in Salem,  where ‘his independence of thought and speech made him enemies who finally drove him from  the town as a ‘pestilential fellow.’”  

Robert Wheaton moved on until he eventually became one of the founders of Rehoboth, Bristol County, Mass.

These and many more goodies are listed in the pages of "Descendants of Robert WHEATON"

http://www.wheatonjk.co.uk/Robert_and_Alice_BOWEN.htm

 I've used this search method to fill out my family history and learn more about my ancestors then I thought possible at the beginning of my family search twenty-five years ago.

So, I know that doing things differently than the normal route can lead to new thinking and new discoveries.  So try a new search today!

Family Photo Fun

This is the only image I have of our Great-g-g-grandpa, James Hicks of Washington County, Tenn. He was born in 1841 in Jonesboro, Washington Co., TN and died in 1915 there.
When I got this photo from my cousin Linda who, in turn, got it from Lyla Dawn, I noticed that James Hicks is sitting out in a yard somewhere.
When I looked to the bottom to see where the photo was taken, I found Gate City, VA. Shipley was the photographer.

Now the interesting thing is, James Hicks lived in Washington County TN his whole life, as far as we know [except for his enlistment with I Co., 8th Tenn Cav.] We don't know of his having ever lived out of the state of Tennessee [census confirm that he was residing in Washington County at least every ten years].
So what was he doing having a photo taken in a yard in Gate City, VA?

I decided I needed to know where Gate City was. Looking it up on the www.rootsweb.com
city/county locater I quickly discovered Gate City is in Scott County.
Hummm.
Looking for it on a map from Google images search engine, I find that Scott County VA and Washington County, TN weren't anywhere near each other!
So what was James doing up there?

The Shipley name is familiar to our family because Rhetta Shipley married George G. Hicks, one of James and Matilda's sons. Rhetta was the daughter of Adam and Elizabeth Robinson Cox Shipley - they also lived in Washington County, TN. No Shipley relations living in Scott County, VA that I can find.

So what was James Hicks doing there in Gate City, VA having his photo taken during his later years? He looks to be in his early or mid 50's in this photo. The card type and the clothes he is wearing support that idea.
The beard is "the scraggly beard those guys wore in those days," my Dad commented. This was a style Civil War vets commonly kept even in their later years.

Since I didn't get any answers looking for Hicks, Hix or Shipley in the census for Scott County around this time, I decided to look into photographers that once worked in Gate City, VA.
Nobody has any listings or paperwork for any Shipley photographers in Gate City, VA!

Now I have two mysteries to work on over the next couple of days...