SwamaBlog

Platting Orientation Using the Census and a Timeline

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 01:42:00 +0000

My progress with creating John Washington Womble’s neighborhood has been slow of late. This weekend I took a break from visiting my local family history center to research so that I could spend more time on this project.

Earlier in the week I came up with the idea of creating a timeline of events that happened in the Civil District where John Washington Womble lived. My idea was that perhaps the various land sales would develop into a better grasp of where the various plats were supposed to be.

A few months ago, I’d listened to a webinar about neighborhood recreation. The lecturer mentioned that one will never completely be able to locate every single tract of land and be able to place it with 100% accuracy in a particular area. This bit of information was a wonderful boost and needed realism for me.

In creating my timeline I learned a few things, Ellen Womble Bowling and her husband sold their land within a few of her father, John Washington Womble. Also Womble’s neighbor, Samuel Faught sold his land the exact same day. Of further interest, John J Womble, nephew to John Washington bought a presumed neighboring tract two years later. I had always thought mistakenly that at least for a short time the men had been neighbors. But not so, according to my timeline.

Unfortunately, listing out the various land transactions became less numerous or easy for me. I’d platted a number of tracts in DeedMapper and began trying to arrange them in a logical manner according to their Census enumeration. This is slow work because the trying to follow the plats and their placement in the Census doesn’t always seem to follow a logical sequence.

Perhaps something to keep in mind is that the enumerator was likely on horseback and likely wasn’t walking. The Census for the 12^th Civil District of Hardeman County isn’t too helpful because it only provides the month on some of the pages as an indication as to when the enumeration was done. So I have no idea if it took the enumerator the entire month to complete where he spent a couple of hours each day traveling around in that Civil District, or if he was able to complete his task within a day.

From prior research I know that there is a bridge that goes across the Hatchie River that was owned by a man named Simpson. A road known back in that time as the Bolivar Simpson road likely ran from the Hatchie River to Bolivar. My thought is that likely the enumerator may have traveled along that road and then made his way in a circuitous route off the road and onto whatever lanes, paths, or pastures may have existed to reach the various people living in that Civil District.

Review of Progress Made in Implementing My 2016 Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:48:00 +0000

My list of 2016 systems for myself included the usual ideas, such as eating better and exercising more frequently. Among those ideas were some serious commitments that I needed to make towards taking control of my genealogical research by documenting the sources I find and have found in the past. Stopping the process of finding documents and not bothering to examine and analyze them until much later or ever. Also, becoming more diligent about filing away the information I’ve collected after examining and analyzing it.

In looking back at 2016 and these systems that I created for myself to follow, some of these ideas did bear some small fruit and others just simply didn’t pan out for a myriad of reasons. The documenting my sources did work out because I made a conscious effort to create citations or at least note down pertinent information about a particular source while I had in front of me and spent time over a period of months creating citations for items I’d found in the past. After completing my research at a repository I wrote citations for the items viewed while still on site or immediately after leaving having that information still fresh in my mind. Instead of writing these source citations sometimes weeks, months, or years later when I was trying to analyze the source later and write about.

In order to document, examine, and analyze these newly found bits of information, I came up with the process of after returning from a repository of entering the item into my research log which included the source citation, then entering the source into Evidentia and using that program to examine and analyze the source.

I tried using Evernote when researching online as a way to help me get into the habit of creating source citations when I found a piece of information or didn’t. What I found was that it was easier for me to just not use Evernote when downloading a digital image of a document found online and instead save the image file to the pertinent research folder on my computer and record the search and findings along with a source citation in my research log.

Research update for August 7, 2016 (yes, I realize it’s November)

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:10:00 +0000

After finishing with the Sarah Daniel petition file, I thought that I would take a short break from transcribing and start work on another file the next day. However after looking through the various files in that day’s collection I thought I would just transcribe a bit of one of the files. I picked one of the longer files, Easter Johnson because it was so long and went into it thinking that I would stop after a page or so of transcribing.

The strange thing was that I’d been preparing myself for what I thought would be a very “dry” file, filled with all sorts of boilerplate and annoying legalese. However, it started out with Lazarus Johnston’s will, which goes on for a page and a half and brought up various events that happened after his death. I became so caught up in what must have happened to his children and grandchildren as a result of those events that I kept transcribing for about seven more pages.

I worked a bit more on the Easter Johnson file tonight, 10 August 2016. And will have to force myself to walk away from it a bit, because again I find myself getting swept up into the lives of these people that I’m transcribing. My suspicion is that even though I’m feel that the petition case is fraught with drama that the reality is that it’s just the language being used and that it’s was just “business as usual” for these family members and the legal personages involved.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this case and if I make more interesting discoveries when I work my way through the other petition files. I’m making a lot of use of the Black’s Law Dictionary that David gave me several years ago and am also learning a bit of the meanings of the legalese that I’m encountering in this particular petition.

Research Update for Summer/Fall 2016

The first part of this post is-as stated in the title-originally from August 7th or at least it was begun on that date. To update you as to my research activities during the interim, this is the latest update.

While transcribing petition files I tried to devote much of my spare time to that process. Unfortunately, doing this left no time to post to this blog. The transcribing task is by no means complete because it's now taken a backseat to a new research project I've begun. Sorry to say, no blog posts will be written about that new project.

I finished transcribing that research day's petition files and moved on to the next file of petitions. Easter Johnson's petition file still interests me, but after transcribing it I've done nothing further with the information.

The thought occurred to me while working with these records that I needed to understand more about the laws that were in effect at that time. Therefore, I began reading Marylynn Salmon's book, Women and the Law of Property in Early America. The book is very informative as to what legal rights women and married couples had when this country began and the "why" some of those laws existed. It was so engrossing; I even took it while working at the FGS conference in Springfield, IL.

After finishing Salmon's book, I began reading the first volume of Genealogical Research: Methods and Sources. I read somewhere, perhaps another genealogy blog about must reads for genealogists and this Milton Rubincam edited tome was among them. Unfortunately, my reading of this has been derailed by another member of the genealogy greats, Donald L. Jacobus. I've been trying to make my way through his book, Genealogy Pastime and Profession.

I will have to make more of an effort to work at transcribing the various petition files and post my findings in this blog.

John Washington Womble Neighborhood Project Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 20:39:00 +0000

Last Saturday, I again braved the intense heat and went to my local Family History Center to finish scanning the remaining petition files on the microfilm I ordered. A couple of days ago I finished transcribing Mahala Grantham’s file and began on Sarah Daniel, widow of Ethelred Daniel’s file. Today, I finished transcribing her file, afterwards took a break--watching some of the men’s gymnastics qualifying rounds--and will start on another petition file.

Since on the first go around with these files, I only made scans of about 5 files there isn’t much hanging over me for that day’s set of scans. Last week, I’d been able to finish with my scanning and have about seven or so files to transcribe from that batch.

My plan once I finish transcribing the files is to then enter the metes and bounds descriptions into DeedMapper and hopefully place it logically in place with my other plats. Then I’ll begin the process again by ordering another roll of microfilm of petitions from my list of missing land owners.

Evernote use

In a previous post I mentioned that I’d begun using Evernote and was trying out how it would work with my genealogy research. I joined a couple of Evernote groups with the idea that I could troubleshoot any issues that might crop up. I’ve experimented with using it in my research and have to say that there’s a steep learning curve at least for me in using it.

Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I don’t have enough space on my tablet to install it and so am not able to test out how the sync feature works. The online help I haven’t found to be helpful in answering my questions. The tutorials only seem to spark ideas, and are lacking in step-by-step details of how a particular feature works.

I learned in using the program that if an image is copied and pasted into a new note that text can’t be added above or below as far as I can tell. When I first installed Evernote I tried out the web clipping tool and was disappointed in how it worked. Anything I searched online, either in the groups I’ve joined, Evernote’s help files, or tutorials never seemed to fully explain how it worked. So I spent a lot of time flailing around clipping things. The clippings, I would find later were a lousy image of what I’d clipped and this was disappointing.

Eventually, I was able to use the clipping tool effectively, but it’s taken a lot of work and just playing around. I get that help files with any software are the last things to get written. But what doesn’t make sense to me is this program has been around seemingly forever, so long that there are people who have outgrown it and are moving on to something else, so why aren’t the tutorials better in explaining how features work?

As a work around to figuring out how features work with Evernote, I’ve taken to posing my questions to Google and abandoning Evernote’s help files, tutorials, and the groups I joined. This is the only thing that’s provided answers even if they’re negative answers.

I’m still mystified as to why many people in the genealogy community find this program helpful. Maybe they like the organizational capabilities and that I can understand, especially if you add tags to your notes. One aspect that I like about it is that it’s helped me become more disciplined in citing my sources when I find them--instead of trying to write a citation six months or years down the road when I’ve forgotten where it was when I found such and such information or image and various other important particulars. However that hasn’t caused me to use Evernote more. But it’s helped me get into the habit of recording where I found X document and to note down a citation for it, which keeps me disciplined in sticking with my system that I’ve strived to maintain for my genealogical research.

Update of John Washington Womble Neighborhood Project

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 20:56:00 +0000

I braved the 90°+ heat to resume my research on my John Washington Womble neighborhood project. The microfilm I looked at contained petition files that were mainly settling estates for those who died intestate. What I found interesting about these files were that they were cataloged with the land records and not with probate records in the FHL online catalog as is the case with Edgecombe County, North Carolina. So basically, if you weren’t going through the FHL online catalog with a fine toothed comb you might miss these records.

I’d gone there with the mindset of obtaining copies of only two petition files. One for Mahala Grantham and the other for Lazarus Johnson; even though, in the back of my mind was the plan to look through the whole roll of film and make note of other petitions that might pertain to my project. It was a good plan to keep on the lookout for other petitions as I found other familiar names and noted down to make copies of those files.

The petitions varied in length from only being under 10 images or to over 50 or more in length. Because I was carefully looking through the entire roll of microfilm and noting down which files interested me, my time was limited at my local FHC. When it came time to make copies of the petitions on my list I pared down the number I would copy that day to 5 out of the 12 that seemed to pertain to my project. I’ll make copies of the remainder at a later date.

Upon returning home, I began transcribing the file for Mahala Grantham in order to better understand what was happening. Also while the index indicated that the petition was for Mahala Grantham, she wasn’t the initial person making the petition to settle an estate and divide land. The main petitioner was a Sarah Grantham, and whose name I hadn’t encountered until looking at the name on the file.

Mahala is mentioned in the petition file as being a widow, but as to who she was married to it’s unclear in the file. Perhaps, when I complete the transcription all of this will become clear. If not I’ll have to research Mahala and those mentioned in order to make sense of the petition and those involved.

It’s not clear to me how this Grantham line connects with that of John Washington Womble’s neighbor, Chalkley Grantham. Obviously, they’re likely related and somewhere in my records I had located an old copy of a Grantham family newsletter that seemed to give an overview of the familial connections.

My plan after transcribing the Mahala Grantham petition is to then transcribe all the rest of the petitions that I copied on Saturday. Hopefully, they’ll contain land descriptions that can be added to my plats, essentially adding more pieces to the “jigsaw puzzle.”

Running Down the Lost Train of Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 23:39:00 +0000

It may appear that I’ve been neglecting my genealogical research since my last post. You likely know the saying life happens while you’re making plans. When last I left off with my research plans I’d finished reading through vol. N, but had yet to plat any of the deeds that I’d found.

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of this land research project after being away from it for some time. Earlier last month I was finally able to get over to my local Family History Center in Annandale and finish reading through vol. O and make the copies of the various pertinent deeds that I’d found in both volumes O and P.

Since then, I’ve reviewed my previous work so that I could find my way back to the train of thought that I’d lost. I read through my last blog post and notes I’d taken about the project and these seemed to help me. This holiday weekend has been partly devoted to running down my lost train of thought, platting deeds I’d discovered, developing an extremely rough and unofficial research plan for my next trip to my local Family History Center, and reading digitized documents on FamilySearch.org about some of the still unaccounted for land that’s missing. Then updating my landownership spreadsheet and coming up with other ideas for keeping track of further records I should try to find on those land owners.

My next step before reading through the microfilm I ordered is to create the official research plan, so that I stay on focus with my research system.

The game plan that I’ve come up with thus far is that I’ll try to locate some of the land owners for who I’ve been unable to find deeds for in petitions that are on microfilm at the FHL. I’ve already indicated on my land ownership spreadsheet which land owners have petitions.

Then for those who are still missing such as the infamous Amos Reed, I’ll see what the microfilmed Trust Deeds have in store for me. If nothing’s found there either, then a trip to the Bolivar Courthouse is in my future.

I’m also in the process of trying out Evernote as a means of trying to keep track of some of my genealogical research—I joined the fb group some time ago and have yet to read any of the posts. Many people have mentioned how helpful the program is, and so I finally decided to give it a shot. We’ll see how it goes with me using it. I’d love to find books on it at my local library, but for some reason haven’t been able to find one in my area that owns a copy.

Continuing Adventures of Neighborhood Land Search Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 02:57:00 +0000

I’ve finished reading through vol. N online, but haven’t platted more deeds since then. Instead, I looked through what deeds I’ve found including those from my visit to my local Family History Center and looked through what tracts I’m missing by using the spreadsheet I’ve created of people enumerated in the 1870 Hardeman County, TN census.

Since some of the acreage amounts don’t match deeds and tax records I’ve found, I decided to go with the theory that those amounts are for multiple tracts of land and then build on that theory with the idea that these multiple tracts of land are next to each other—unless it’s explicitly mentioned in the documents that they’re not. This may be a bad theory to make, but I feel that it’s logical since that seems the only reasonable explanation for the tax records I’ve found to agree with the deeds. Also, my theory seemed to work when I was able to “tie” 3 deeds together for one land owner when their cumulative acreage matched exactly to the acreage they were taxed on in the tax records.

Raiford Bizzell listed in 1870 tax list.

Raiford Bizzle's platted deeds in DeedMapper.

Raiford Bizzell compiled taxed acreage and plats listed in spreadsheet.

As I compared the records I’ve found with the spreadsheet, I found tracts that were possible matches for what I was missing and indicated this on the spreadsheet. I still haven’t found deeds for all of the land owners listed on my spreadsheet, but still feel that I’m making progress on this project—albeit slowly.

Once I finished reading through vol. N, I began on vol. M, Sept. 1853-July 1855. In this vol. I found some interesting deeds that may help me in placing some of the other plats I’ve found. One of these is the deed for 189 acres that Wm. Fulgham sells to Pitser Miller. This mentions a 2000 acre tract belonging Thomas Claiborne that seems to stand out in some of the land records I’ve viewed and also shares a boundary with one of my ancestor’s deeds.

Another deed I found was Stephen Childress’ 127 acres that he sold to Robert H Goad. Goad later sells part of this land to Henry Bizzle. In the deed to Henry, it mentions a road that runs from Bolivar to Simpson’s Ferry and states that it was once part of Childress’ entry.

I don’t know if I’ll find the time to plat out the deeds that seem pertinent to recreating my ancestor’s neighborhood. But my plan is to definitely review more closely those deeds I’ve found to see if they will fit into the puzzle and help create an accurate depiction of the neighborhood.

Continuing Adventures of Neighborhood Land Search

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 01:34:00 +0000

I’ve finished reading through Hardeman County, Tennessee’s deed book vol. Q, August 1859-November 1860 that’s available digitally via FamilySearch.org. Since volumes O-P, 1857-1859 have yet to be digitized, I ordered it and while waiting for it to arrive at my local Family History Center I began reading through vol. N, July 1855-February 1857. In reading through the digitized deed books online I’ve added Rachel Dunn’s land and some tracts to the neighborhood.

Today, I braved an extremely rare and unexpected April snow storm in the DC metro area to venture out to my local family history center to view the microfilm. I began by reading through vol. P, May 1858-August 1859 while armed with my list of needed land owners. There was a glimmer of hope when I saw a record for a J Ferguson, the record made no mention of land, but I continued on through the book. I found deeds for the 3 Bizzell people in John Washington Womble’s 1870 neighborhood.

When I returned home I began adding the plats to DeedMapper and indicating on my spreadsheet of land owners that their land had been platted. In working with placing the plats in DeedMapper, I’ve found the topographical map to be more helpful, because it contains so much more details of the area, than the previous background map I was using.

My schedule for tomorrow and possibly the rest of the coming week is to continue platting the tracts I found today and also to finish reading through vol. N online and then plat those findings.

Snippet of Absolom Lane to Lewis Glenn deed

Neighborhood Land Search Update

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 22:06:00 +0000

After viewing the tax records, I ordered the next deed books that I felt I needed to read through in order to find the remaining neighbors’ land. Last Saturday, I went to my local Family History Center to view them. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of the neighbors I’m still looking for. There were deeds of interest to me in them for the particular area, but just didn’t happen to be for my ancestor’s neighbors.

I looked through all of vol. R and began reading through vol. Q. Since the microfilm scanner was being used by another patron, I put off scanning what documents I found and resolved to scan them at a later date.

Once I returned home, I decided since I was almost finished reading through vol. Q that I would order another roll of microfilm and that’s when I made an amazing discovery. Apparently, FamilySearch.org has digitized some of the deed books I’m interested in reading through available online. Still many of these records haven’t yet been digitized, but because many that I’m interested in reading through are, I won’t have to order them and can view them from the comfort of my living room.

Since vols. Q and R were available digitally, I was able to download the images I had noted down while at my local Family History Center. Then I took up where I left off in vol. Q and downloaded what images pertained to the area I’m researching.

Portion of digitized deed book

The schedule for this coming Saturday is to look through the rest of vol. Q and download any that are pertinent to my research. Then if I have time, enter them into DeedMapper.

I searched through more of FamilySearch’s land records holdings for Hardeman County, Tennessee and found that survey books, one roll of petition records, and an early roll of tax records have all been digitized so they’re available online.

What helped me was the fact that the deed index for Hardeman County, Tennessee has been digitized. Yes, just because it’s an index I know that it’s not inclusive of every deed or document that was ever recorded in Hardeman County. But still, it’s a place to start in locating the remaining neighbors’ deeds or review to see if I missed something.

After noticing this interesting bit, I looked through the 1860 census and noted on my neighbor list those who had been enumerated in Civil District 12. This information should help me determine when someone may have purchased their land in my ancestor’s neighborhood. The only obstacle with the land records in Hardeman County is that tax records and deeds during the years around the Civil War are not extant. So there is the possibility that if some of John Washington Womble’s neighbors bought land during that time period that the document may not have survived the war. There’s also the possibility that the deed could’ve been recorded much later.

The search continues…

The Further Adventures of the Womble Neighborhood Land Search

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:47:00 +0000

I was able to resume my search for John Washington Womble’s neighbors earlier this year. The microfilm that I’d requested last fall and resulted in a minor snafu with the FHL was resolved in February. I was able to make copies of the tax records for Civil District 12 for the years 1869-1872 and took note of the amount of acreage the neighbors owned.

I then used this information when imputing the information into the spreadsheet I created about John Washington Womble’s neighbors. The spreadsheet lists out the individual land plots that the neighbors owned and whether or not it’s been platted out. Then I listed out what plots of land I’m still missing. The list also contained the land acreage based on the findings from the tax records I viewed.

After I’d viewed the tax records, I ordered the next deed books that I felt I needed to read through in order to find the remaining neighbors’ land. While waiting for the microfilm to arrive, I checked out topographical maps on the U.S. Geological Survey's website at http://www.usgs.gov/. Maps can be searched for and downloaded for free from their site. I've wanted a more detailed map and one that I knew the scale or a least could determine the scale better that I could place my plats on.
I selected the section of Hardeman County, Tennessee that I'm interested in and then began downloading. I selected 4 maps and then needed to find a way to piece them together. Once they were downloaded, I used a graphic editing program to clip away the white borders surrounding each of the map images. Then pieced the images together and created a larger image or map which was then imported into DeedMapper.
Hopefully this new background map will help me more when placing the plats.

Part of Hardeman County, Tennessee topographical map

Hardeman County, Tennessee Tax Records

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 01:42:00 +0000

In my review of the roll of Tax Records for Hardeman County, Tennessee, I discovered something I’d missed on my earlier viewings of this roll—a section titled, Additional Tax Reported. These lists cover only the years 1870-1872 and lists out what I’ve theorized only as people that were missed on the previous lists or perhaps they’re delinquent tax payers. I somehow doubt the latter and more believe the earlier theory.

The people are listed in non-alphabetical order, so are basically randomly listed. The civil district they lived in was noted by their name and then the other usual information was given as on the other tax lists. These lists are categorized by year, but that’s really the only organization to them.

Excerpt from Additional Tax Reported section.

Platting Through My Summer Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 23:18:00 +0000

I wrote back in April that I’d finished looking through Deed books W and X. With summer vacation having ended here in the DC metro area since school started, I’m offering readers a look at how I spent my summer vacation.

In May, I purchased DeedMapper 4.2 from Direct Line Software. I had no problems installing it and have found it to be helpful with what’s evolved into a mass platting project. The software has made creating the plats so much faster and easier than using graph paper and a protractor and put an end to the Geometry class flashbacks/nightmares.

I’ve spent nearly every Saturday afternoon at my local Family History Center this summer reading through deed books page by page and scanning records that I believe to be relevant to my platting project. My vacation was even spent there reading through a deed book.

At first with DeedMapper, I was putting the plats where I believed they were supposed to be on the map I’m using to place the tracts. This became too problematic when other plats didn’t appear to jive with tracts that I felt surer of their probable location. This was resolved by moving the questionably placed tracts out of the area until I had more information to suggest where they were located.

So the end all is that I concentrated on plats that mentioned creeks, rivers, and roads that I could readily identify on the map I’m using. As I worked I felt a sense of accomplishment when in reading some deeds more closely that specifically mentioned relationships between the parties involved where an ancestor was parsing out pieces of their land to their grandchild or child. Unfortunately, these records don’t completely apply to the line I’m researching, but I felt it was good to see. One record was helpful as it concerned the son-in-law of my ancestor John Washington Womble and coupled with some other records I’ve found on the son-in-law it added more pieces to the jigsaw as why my ancestor moved to Hardeman County, Tennessee in the first place.

The deed books that I’ve read through at this writing are:

Vol. W January 1870-October 1871

Vol. X October 1871-November 1872

Vol. Y November 1872-February 1874

Vol. Z February 1874-January 1876

Vol. V September 1, 1868-January 29, 1870

Vol. U April 1867-September 11, 1868

Currently, I’m reading through Vol. T Oct. 30, 1866-April 29, 1867.

Another event in my research was reading a book on Reconstruction. At first I checked out a book titled, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner. The copy they had at my local library was published in 1988. As my due date for returning the book got closer, I tried to renew it, but couldn’t. I wound up purchasing an updated version kindle edition that was written by the same author and published in 2014. This is a fantastic book in my opinion and gave me more insight into the time period that John Washington Womble lived in while he was in Nashville during the Civil War and why he and his family relocated to Hardeman County.

Unfortunately, it didn’t give me insight as to why they left briefly returning to live in Nashville for about a year or so and then returning to Hardeman County, but I likely need to read about the Panic of 1873 or do more research on the family as to their motivations.

After reading the book it sort of made me wonder why that point in history wasn’t covered in much detail in my American History class in high school.

I feel that in my research I’m reaching the end of what’s available deed wise just after the Civil War. There appears to be a gap with either what the LDS church filmed of the deed books during the Civil War years or the recording of the records was interrupted because of the war. My thought was to order the vols. AA-BB 1876-1879 next and then to move on to the older records before making a trip out to the Bolivar Courthouse to see what I’m missing.

It was interesting reading the Reconstruction book while reading through the deed books from the same era because I found items recorded that showed many people having financial problems as a result of the end of their way of life prior to the Civil War. An interesting sight, were records recorded about events that happened before the war and the parties involved were now attempting to resolve their issues now that the fighting had ended. One record was about a woman who purchased slaves before the war as part of an estate sale. She had apparently purchased the people on credit and hadn’t paid what was owed on the slaves. No mention was made in the record that the slaves were now free--only that she was past due on her debts.

Blogger vs. Wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 22:30:00 +0000

Please note: this post has nothing to do about genealogy or any of my other hobbies. It is merely my personal comparison of blogger and wordpress. It is not meant as a slam or praise for or against either blogging platform.

I’ve had this blog since March 2011 and in it I’ve tried to recount what I’ve discovered while doing genealogy and activities in my other hobbies. My reason for beginning it was to let those who were interested know what progress I’d made with my genealogy. Also, I’d hoped that it might be a way to communicate with others researching the same family line(s).

My reason for why I chose blogger was because it appeared to be the most simplistic and straightforward. I considered using wordpress, but didn’t mainly because it seemed too complex for me. While I consider myself to be somewhat tech savvy, I’m by no means an advanced user of tech or fantastic at HTML coding.

Since going with blogger for my blog, I’ve become a bit annoyed at some of the functionality of it. Mainly the function of adding pictures to my posts has become problematic for me. At first, I believed that it was the browser I was using, since I used Opera and knew that not everything worked well or rendered as it should with that browser. Since switching over to Firefox, this wonkiness when adding pictures hasn’t improved. What I’ve had happen to me when adding photos is that I upload photos from my computer that I want to include in my post and then click on “one” of the uploaded images to insert it in a specific place in the post. This has resulted in all of the photos that I’ve uploaded for my post being added instead of just the one image.

The work around that I came up with was to first upload the images I wanted to use for a post into Google+/Picasa and then inserted them from there instead of uploading them from my pc. This worked okay for this post. However, I did encounter an interesting hiccup with this system.

Recently, I looked more closely at wordpress and am strongly considering switching the location of my blog over to that platform. I found in tinkering around with wordpress that I could easily add photos to my posts and this was extremely pleasing to me. However, my one gripe with wordpress is having rather frequent reminders that the platform seems to operate as a “for pay” platform. So, any customization of my blog requires one to pay a fee or fees in order to alter the appearance or have access to more features.

I understand that there’s nothing wrong in companies making money. And I’m familiar with the mantra of “you get what you pay for,” but it’s rather tiresome when one is attempting to familiarize themselves with a new service or platform and is told that what one wants to do can’t be done with out paying.

In order to truly understand what wordpress has to offer me for free, I got a book on it from my local library. After a cursory look at it today, it hasn't shown me at the time of writing this post a way to circumvent the wordpress pay wall. The book did seem to allude to the fact that not everything in wordpress is free and even hinted that only a portion of the platform's offerings are free.

If it turns out that there’s no way to circumvent the pay wall, then I can always continue to use blogger and since I’ve been able to tinker with the appearance more, are able to include CSS for free, and this is where my readers can find me then perhaps my blog’s home will remain on blogger.

I found that adding photos with wordpress wasn't quite as easy as I'd thought it would be. As I mentioned, I first uploaded the images into Google+/Picasa before inserting them into my post. Wordpress didn't have any access to Google+/Picasa, so I had to find another way to obtain my photos that were stuck in almost a bizarre purgatory manifested as Google+/Picasa. I was able to retrieve the images by downloading them from there and saving them to a folder on my pc and then adding them to my wordpress post. So this wasn't exactly the convenience and ease I was hoping for.

Womble Property Search Happenings

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 21:00:00 +0000

I mentioned in my previous post, Census Research Update, about my plans for searching for the land that John Washington Womble lived on in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District. I’ve been searching through deed books W and X for records pertaining to land located in that specific area and have made copies of whatever documents I’ve found located in that area. I’ve created some plats of the various tracts I’ve found and tried assembling them into what I think is the proper orientation. So far, I’ve only been able to match up a couple of tracts with their correct neighbors, while other tracts end up being matchless and thus far have become random pieces of land that seem to fall within the vast space of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.

As I worked through what’s become a bit mind numbing a I started toying with the idea of taking a research trip out to Bolivar in Hardeman County, Tennessee and visiting their courthouse and looking at plat maps which would likely tell me the orientation of the various plats of land I’ve found and where the land that John Washington Womble lived on was located.
Thinking about the project, my thoughts turned to how I could make this go faster or go about getting the information I want more easily.

The thought occurred to me to contact the courthouse myself and see if plat maps of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District were available. I own a book, County Courthouse Book by Elizabeth Petty Bentley that I haven’t used much since receiving it as a Christmas gift many years ago. I wasn’t sure if the information about the Hardeman County courthouse officials would be accurate, so I googled the courthouse and found their website. The information on webpage about the Registrar’s office correlated with the information found in Bentley’s book an email address. I sent an email to the registrar asking about plat maps for the area I’m researching and was told that they had some old copies of records that might be useful to me.

I was elated at the news and gave the registrar my address so copies could be mailed to me. About a week or so later, I received an envelope from the courthouse and opened it. Inside were some maps, but they didn’t show individual plats for the area I’m researching. One of the maps was nearly identical to one I already owned and had photocopied from a library book. This one however contained notations on various roads or streams and other areas that I had read about in the various court records, road work orders, and deeds I’ve looked at. Needless to say I was disappointed by what was sent to me. It’s still not clear to me if the courthouse has plat books with the information I’m seeking. However, I appreciate the registrar with providing me with these maps, because in its way there’s now more of an impetus to travel to Bolivar to seek out the information I want to find.

I’ve finished searching for deeds in the Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District in books W and X and plan to move on to searching for land in Civil District 11, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District. While reviewing the copies received from the courthouse, I did determine a factor in my searching. That is that the location of the property I’m looking for is located near the Bolivar road. I’ve seen this mentioned in a few other documents and know that some of the collateral Womble kin to my ancestor were assigned in the past to do repairs on this road. I’ve collected a lot of deeds that follow the Hatchie River, but based on one of the maps sent to me the road is pretty much directly west of this river, so any properties I see that mention the river likely aren’t in the immediate vicinity of where John Washington Womble lived.

I likely realized this bit of geography when beginning this quest. My thought probably was that if I platted all of the various land tracts within that specific region that I would be able to create the layout of what the neighborhood looked like. Some research methods in National Genealogical Society Quarterly articles that I’ve read appear to demonstrate that the author has tried to focus on the land owning neighbors of an ancestor and using the census and deed records to build or recreate the neighborhood that way. I’ve been attempting to do this, and am finding it challenging due to the fact that the names of the neighbors sometimes change over the years and it has appear nearly impossible to try to pin down when person X lived near person Y. It almost seems that whoever is recording the deeds is going by their own memory or that of the person whose deed they’re recording. Since there appears to be no check and balances in the accuracy of the names of the people being mentioned in the deeds how can one determine where these properties are really located within a specific county? It seems surprising that a county government would have such a relaxed approach to recording their property records in the past.

Newspaper search for Womble family

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 20:30:00 +0000

I’ve used newspapers in my genealogical research in the past. These searches have mostly taken place when I’ve done on site research in the town where my Womble ancestors have lived so it’s basically been limited to looking at microfilmed newspapers. At times, I’ve been fortunate enough to find the “local” newspapers of my ancestors on microfilm at the Library of Congress.

Digitization of documents is becoming more pervasive and more easily accessible to the public. Newspapers along with other records used in genealogical research are being digitized as well. Sites such as the Library of Congress offers free access to a selection of digitized newspapers. This collection seems limited to those newspapers published before the early 1920’s, which has put a limit to what I can find about some of my Womble ancestors.

I’ve tried other means of locating the information I’ve been looking for such as obituaries of my great grandfather, Albert Womble’s siblings. One of my successes involved finding an obit that had been put on the site Photobucket and there I was able to make contact with a distant cousin who had posted several pictures and articles about the Womble family.

While I was at RootsTech this year, I considered the possibility of using the site Newspapers.com to search for news articles from the Savannah Courier a newspaper published Savannah, Tennessee which is the county seat of Hardin County, Tennessee. Previously, at the Family History Library I had found the book by Tony Hays, No Man’s Land: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Hardin County. The preface stated that the book is a compilation of articles that were originally published in Savannah Courier. The book mentioned a lot of events and accounts of happenings in Hardin County before and after the Civil War. However, I wasn’t sure what to do with the information since the author didn’t include more detailed sources other than that the information came from the Savannah Courier. I talked with another genealogist while in Salt Lake City about my findings in Tony Hays’ book and what searching I could do to verify or if I should verify the information in his book. I was encouraged to attempt to verify the information and told that what needed to be done was to attempt to track down issues of the Savannah Courier and read them to correlate the information in Hays’ book with the articles in the newspaper.

This led me to talk to the folks at the Newspapers.com booth and see if the Savannah Courier was a newspaper that they had in their collection. Unfortunately it wasn’t, however this didn’t cause me to completely disregard the usefulness of the website.

Sometimes research ideas come to me indirectly. I happened to be looking through my newsfeed on Facebook, where I’ve joined a few genealogy groups. One of these the Tennessee GenealogicalSociety posted an article about finding maiden names for ancestors. The article brought up searching newspapers for maiden names and someone commented on searching for digitized records on the site Missouri Digital Heritage. This set off the thought in my mind to search for digitized California newspapers for the obituary of Albert Womble’s brother, Thomas J. Womble. I had tried to find San Bernardino, California newspapers available at various universities, but had always come up empty handed.

This new idea of searching for digitized San Bernardino, California newspapers led me to the site, California Digital Newspaper Collection. They didn’t have what I was looking for so I wound up googling “digitized San Bernardino Sun” and came across this newspaper available on the Newspapers.com site.

I was able to search the site to see if the time period I was interested in was available and it was. Previous research I’d done on Thomas had given me a clue as to his death date.

My goal was to obtain a death certificate for him, but I’m sure that this won’t be available to me due to California’s strict privacy laws. Also, I was hoping that an obituary would give me more information about his life and the Womble family.

I signed up for the free 7 day trial and was able to find Thomas’ obituary in the San Bernardino Sun. The clipping tool was fairly straightforward to use and I could then download and/or print the image. After downloading it, I saved the image to my computer and for those of you who are regular readers of my blog, yes, I entered the search into my research log and wrote a citation for the obit—so I’m following my new system.

I considered going ahead and becoming a regular subscriber to Newspapers.com, but eventually decided against it. The reason being while I loved the clipping, downloading, and saving features on the site, the functionality of these worked great for me and were better than what’s available on the Library of Congress’ digitized newspapers area, ‘Chronicling America.’ The truth is you can’t beat the cost of free stuff. Also, I didn’t find the search feature to be any better or worse than the Library of Congress. Yes, there is the limitation of not being able to search more recent newspapers on their site, but my focus is on mainly on older newspapers. Perhaps, I will become a subscriber of Newspapers.com in the future if their collection comes to include more newspapers from Hardin County, Tennessee; Massac County, Illinois (specifically the Metropolis Planet); and a greater variety of Nashville newspapers.

My free trial of the service did cause me to locate some real gems. Such as the court case, Womble vs. Womble listed in an 1874 Nashville paper, delinquent tax lists from 1910 that listed my great grandfather, Albert Womble. Finding him listed on these lists gave me more insight into his life as single father in Paducah and it wasn’t surprising to find him in such a list. However, it was surprising to see the extent of his struggle with single parenthood after the death of his wife and how this seeped into other areas of his life.

Attempting to Take Control of my Genealogical Research

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:41:00 +0000

Earlier this year I considered making a list of New Year’s resolutions; however, I decided not to do this. The reason being is that they’re essentially goals that you set for yourself. My husband had recently read a book by Scott Adams and in the book Scott said that “goals are for losers and systems are for winners.” This outlook of Scott Adams changed my viewpoint on goals and resolutions so I decided to try to go about planning and organizing my life or at least one aspect of my life differently.

So instead of creating actual resolutions for myself I made a list of Genealogy Goals for 2015. Yes, I know, goals are for losers; however, I did include an item about how I can try to take control of my research. Basically, I want to have a system for how I deal with the stuff that I find when I’m researching.

The taking control of my research idea is from the January 2015 issue of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society’s newsletter, Westward Into Nebraska. They had an article by Lisa Alzo that was taken from her blog. I read the article and was inspired to “take control of my research!” This is what got me thinking of how to create a system for how I process the information I find after searching for it.

It did take me some time because it’s now March and I haven’t really implemented my new found system. I’ve taken some steps to organize it and manage it, such as I came up with the idea to add a source citation column to my research log. Another column I created was one for Source Analysis. These are two of the steps I took to get control of it, because Lisa’s article got me thinking about what bad habits I have in regards to my research. As I sat and thought about it, I realized that my bad genealogy habits are not writing down the source citations right away for the things I find. I do put the information almost immediately into my research log, and will mention where I found the stuff. But after I’ve finished that task, no formal citation is ever written for the source of the information I’ve perhaps spent weeks, months, or years thinking about how to find, searching for it, and then perhaps finding a small piece to the puzzle. The other bad habit I have with my research is never stopping to analyze the source and writing about my research findings formally, instead of just writing about some of the happenings in this blog.

Once I realized what these bad habits were, I needed to come up with a way to deal with them and stop my bad habits. Yes, I’ve included source citations in my genealogy software program for the different life events of my ancestors, and some of these sources are duplicated on my WeRelate page. However, I didn’t have anything written down in one central place for all of my sources. So that’s what led me to create columns for citations and analysis in my research log, so that everything would be in one place and that I wouldn’t be able to walk away once I’d entered in finding a particular piece of information or having visited a website and coming up empty. The fact that I needed to cite the source would be staring me at in the face, so I would likely feel compelled to write a citation for the information or lack thereof.

While I was at the RootsTech/FGS conference I overheard some people near my booth talking about the Evidentia program. It’s for managing the sources that you’ve accumulated. I was intrigued by it, but as it was extremely busy in the exhibit hall I didn’t have much time to go in search of their booth and find out more.

However, soon after hearing about the software, the guy from the company stopped by my booth early one morning before the hall opened to ask me a question about something in regards to the conference. I saw that he was with the Evidentia company and asked him about the program. He gave me some information and later when one of my colleagues watched the booth, I went over to learn more. I did buy the software and have begun using it, but still want to finish my project of sourcing everything that’s in my research log. I’ll write more about what progress I’m making with citing my sources, how my system is working out for me, and perhaps how the Evidentia program is working out for me.

Census Research Update

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 21:45:00 +0000

Back in August I wrote about extracting census data in an effort to learn more about my great, great grandfather, John Washington Womble. As a correction to the previous post, the Civil Districts I extracted the census data from were the 12th and 13th from the 1870 census and then the 11th Civil District from the 1880 census. I’m curious to learn where exactly in Hardeman County, Tennessee he lived and anything else this information can tell me about his life there.

This has been a long process and I’m not finished yet, and probably haven’t even reached the tip of the iceberg. I spent the fall going through deed indices; yes some may say that wasn’t truly a great starting point because indices don’t always contain a thorough listing of everyone in a particular book. However, I needed a place to start and knew going in that I would need to consult the deed books themselves to truly cover all of my bases.

I even ordered a roll of microfilm of surveys for Hardeman and made several copies of surveys that were located either entirely or partially in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District. This was the limit I set for what I would search in an effort to learn where his land was located, and yes I know I’m leaving out the 13th Civil District—I will cover that.

After collecting this information, which I knew wasn’t enough, I began to plat out the surveys I’d copied. I tried using a free online program and considered purchasing an expensive program to help me plat all of these surveys. Instead, I took the hard road and platted them by hand using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and at times a protractor when necessary.

This was time consuming, but interesting because I became drawn into what I believe may be the terrain of his neighborhood. My thought is that John Washington Womble likely lived in the vicinity of the Hatchie River. I could be wrong; as I haven’t finished platting all of the surveys I collected and haven’t finished my search of the properties that surrounded his.

I tried comparing my plats to the present day Hardeman County, Tennessee on Googlemaps, but still could never completely connect them enough to tie the plats with the images I found online.

While creating the plats, I found mention of a property that always seemed to be referred to in similar with sometimes varying terms: Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others. I first noticed this description in a land transfer from Aby Grantham to John J Womble.

The last name Claiborne is significant because it may be connected to John Washington Womble’s 2nd wife Rhoda Caroline Richardson. Additionally, some of the property description of the land purchased by John J Womble seemed to mirror a neighboring property that coincidentally was owned by John Washington Womble, who I believe, was John J. Womble’s uncle.

I had the opportunity to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah this past February when I worked the NGS booth at the RootsTech/FGS conference. There I did a page by page search through deed book W looking for land transactions that were in the area I’d cordoned off in my mind-Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District. Again I saw mentioned in various deeds the infamous, Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others and made copies of those. Hopefully, I can use that plat as an anchor in which to join all the other “puzzle pieces” of plats that I’ve already created or will create and be able to fit John Washington Womble’s plat in amongst them.

Upon returning to Virginia, I’ve ordered microfilm from the FHL of deed books W and X and once it arrives plan to continue my page by page search for properties within Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.

My plan is that once I’ve gathered together those plats for the Civil District 12 that I’ll then work on locating plats for the 13th Civil District and then be able to put John Washington Womble’s 1870’s neighborhood together.

Census! Census! Census!

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 23:55:00 +0000

Back in May I watched a genealogy lecture where the speaker encouraged the audience, including me, to research our ancestor’s neighborhood. I’ve heard this many times and have written posts about the FAN club principle for this very blog. In my genealogical research I’ve tried to learn more about John Washington Womble’s life in Tennessee and understand more as to why he left Hardeman County, moved to Nashville, and then returned to Hardeman about a year later.

I had studied before the 1870 and 1880 Hardeman County, TN census records for his household, in addition to the households of some of his children, and nephew in an effort to answer my questions. However, I wasn’t able to learn much else that was new information.

After watching that genealogy lecture, I remembered a genealogy class assignment where I had to analyze the data of 100 people each in two different census years in an area where one of my ancestors lived. I had really enjoyed the assignment, and decided to do something similar. However, since John Washington Womble lived in different civil districts in 1870 and 1880, that evidence told me that he likely moved to a completely different area in the county than the one that he lived in when he left in 1873. I felt that it would be a good idea to extract the census data from the civil district that he moved to in 1870 and 1880 in order to learn more about the neighborhood into which he moved to.

I then downloaded each of the census pages for the 11^th civil district for the census years 1870 and 1880 and created spreadsheets for each year. Then, I began going through the pages and extracting the names, ages, race, and occupation, etc. for each resident of that district. It was a pretty long process and not very exciting, but I felt that I discovered some clues as to why John Washington Womble moved back there when he left Nashville and perhaps even why he moved there in the first place after the Civil War.

As I extracted the data, I did come across some problems with my plan. A few pages of the 1880 census that I was extracting data from had parts of the pages damaged. So, I didn’t have complete information on all of the residents in that district. I tried viewing the records using different census record providers to see if perhaps I could find undamaged records. However I wasn’t fortunate, and decided to just leave out that information since it wasn’t available and continued extracting.

I’m still in the process of crunching the census data for both years, but will post again if I make any new discoveries.

Miniature PI office part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 18:56:00 +0000

After finishing building the PI office, I began to work on making furniture for it. I started out by making the occasional table and bookcase. As I mentioned in the previous post about this project, the office had to be scaled down to fit the room box I was using. Therefore, the furniture would need to be scaled down as well. I made patterns for the various pieces of furniture using the measurements provided in the instructions to see what wouldn’t fit or would need to be scaled down a bit.

No measurements were given for the bookcase, so I just came up with my own measurements and then wound up using instead measurements from a miniature bookcase that’s in one of my other houses to make the pattern.

The pattern for the occasional table turned out to be too large for the office and so was extensively cut down to a smaller size. The file cabinet remained the same size, but the loveseat and desk that I planned to make was changed to a chair and much smaller desk due to space constraints.

Making the bookcase and occasional table was fairly simple after making the necessary changes to the sizes of the items. I decided to not follow the article’s instructions and held off on painting the pieces until after construction was complete. This worked out fine and I found it easier to paint an unfinished piece of furniture as opposed to tiny pieces of wood or thick cardboard. I did find the choice of the paint color to be a bit odd and I’m still not sure if the article’s author intended for the pieces to have an olive greenish tint to them, but that’s the color I got when I mixed some black acrylic paint with the raw sienna and gel medium together. It seemed to be an odd choice, but perhaps the author wanted a bit of contrast from the wood grain finish of the office walls. To my eye it seems as though just another shade of brown would’ve been fine, but perhaps the author wanted something a bit more extreme and to give more of an impression of an aged appearance to the office.

Since I still wasn’t sure how small I wanted to make the desk and chair, I held off on constructing these and focused on making the file cabinet next. I decided to paint the pieces and then glue them together first per the instructions, since I was a bit intimidated by making this piece. The instructions and diagrams seemed pretty extensive at first glance, so it seemed important to follow them closely. My first mistake was deciding to use metallic silver paint instead of just a regular gray spray paint or acrylic paint. I found soon after that the paint was too bright and intense for a file cabinet and tried to remedy it by mixing black and a light gray paint together to get the desired shade. This didn’t work out either and wound up looking a bit streaky in places, so I decided I needed to get some gray spray paint or at least a darker gray acrylic paint. In the end, I never found any gray spray paint that met my specifications and settled for a darker gray acrylic paint.

The instructions for the file cabinet I found were less than desirable and sections of them seemed to have been edited out from the article. I don’t feel this is the author’s fault and more that of whoever edited the author’s submitted article. First the instructions give the measurements for the front, sides, bottom, top, and back of the file cabinet and then tell you to cut these out and paint them and then glue some of them together. Then it talks about scoring lines in the front piece to indicate where the drawers are and then to cut through some of the layers of the board in the narrow areas between the cuts and peel off a couple of layers to form the recessed drawer spacers.

Since the front piece was already been painted along with the other pieces this narrow leaves white areas where the layers of board have been peeled away and no where else in the instructions does it say to paint over these areas. I wound up painting the white areas because they looked pretty unsightly. Then after gluing the front pieces to the partially constructed file cabinet it talks about cutting out pieces to make the open drawer of the cabinet. It seemed strange to me to present cutting pieces for the drawer at this stage in the instructions, when they could’ve been included when giving the measurements for the other file cabinet pieces and been asked to set them aside once they’d been painted. The instructions also never mention painting these pieces, but it seemed logical to me so I painted them. Again, this isn’t the author’s fault, but seems to be something that should’ve been realized while editing the piece for publication.

After the drawer is glued together and painted, I slid it in the opening even though there was nothing mentioned about this in the instructions. I saw no need to glue it in place, since it seemed to fit snugly.

Next on the agenda for the file cabinet was making the drawer labels and the slots that they fit into. The lettered labels are provided in the instructions, but all that said about creating the slots is to cut the tabs from silver cardstock for each drawer—no sizing information is given as to what the dimensions should be. At first I found this daunting and wasn’t sure what I could do to “fix” my problem of trying to figure out how large to make them when it occurred to me to glue the drawer labels to the silver cardstock and then once the glue dried cut out the tabs with the labels centered on the silver cardstock. The trick seemed to be to cut so that a silver edge was evenly around the labels. Because again the instructions failed me, I used the picture in the article to glue the labels in what I believed to be the right place on the file drawers.

I used heavy duty staples to make the handles, per the instructions. These had the legs trimmed and holes were poked into the drawer fronts 1/4” up from the drawer bottom and glued in place.

Since I’ve finished creating the bookcase, occasional table, and file cabinet, next on my list is to begin working on a desk for the office.

Research recap and where I’m headed part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Mon, 26 May 2014 21:55:00 +0000

At first in my research of the Hardeman County tax records, I thought that I could just view a small portion of them and get the information I wanted. I found that this wasn’t possible because of the fact that it appeared that John Washington Womble never left Hardeman County because some version of his name always seemed to appear in the tax lists.

As I mentioned earlier, I looked at Hardeman County tax records from 1865-1880 that I ordered on microfilm from the Family History Library. I made copies of the records that seemed pertinent to my research and then transferred that information into Excel spreadsheets.

Hardeman County Tax Records

According to the 1869 tax record book, the taxes collected were recorded on 30 May 1869. The only explanation I can give for why John Washington Womble is not listed in the 1869 tax records is because he may not have owned land when the taxes were collected or perhaps he lacked sufficient income and so was considered to be exempt from paying taxes that year.

His oldest daughter, Ellen married Isham Bowling in that same county on 4 August 1869, so it seems likely that John Washington Womble and his family moved to Hardeman County probably in 1867 or even as late as winter 1868.

The J W Wamble listed in the 1870 tax list must be John Washington Womble. The reason being is that the only item he’s taxed on is 83 acres of land. This property correlates to the 83 acres that is sold to P J Tranum in 1873. I did find the record where John Washington Womble purchased 83 acres from Chalkley Grantham and his wife, Abby in a deed registered March 1872. No other deeds were found for John W Womble in Hardeman County before the deed recorded in 1872.

John W. Womble is listed in the 1870 U.S. census as living in Hardeman County, TN in the 12^th Civil District.

A person with the same name appears in the 1871 tax list in District 12.

A J H Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1872 tax list. The letter H is probably just a misspelling on the tax collector’s part.

J W Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1873 tax list.

John W Womble appears in the Nashville City Directory from 1874 to 1875. The 1880 census does list a John Wash. Wamble the 11^th Civil District and the 1880 Agriculture census indicates that he is renting the land he’s farming. This evidence suggests to me that John W. Womble left Hardman and when he moved back, moved to a different civil district.

What I also found in looking at the census records, both population and agriculture schedules, was another Womble family living in Hardeman County. This family is headed by a J J Womble who I believe to be John Jobes Womble.

John Jobes Womble

A J W Womble or an individual with similar name or initials appear in subsequent tax records after 1870 up until 1878 when I found a John Wamble listed living in district 11.

It’s my belief that John Jobes Womble is the son of John Washington Womble’s brother, Warren. This belief is based on previous research that I’ve done on the Womble family line. According to census records, John Jobes Womble had a son named John W Womble. I haven’t been able to figure out if his middle name was also Washington; however, the name similarity creates the illusion that my ancestor never left Hardeman County, Tennessee.

The only Womble/Wamble I found listed in the tax records from 1865 to 1869 was John Jobes Womble. In 1870, there are three people with the Wamble surname, J J Wamble, A W Wamble, and J W Wamble. The person named J W Wamble is paying tax on 83 acres of land. Neither of the other two Wombles paid taxes on any land and all three are listed in District No. 12 just like the 1870 census.

According to the 1870 Tennessee constitution, Article II, section 28 that’s posted at http://www.tngenweb.org/law, all males between the age of 21 and 50 were taxed. Because of this law, I believe that the J W Wamble listed on the tax lists after 1873 is John W. Womble, John Jobes Womble’s son. In the 1870 census the John W listed in John Jobes’ household is said to be 16; therefore, by 1874, the son would have been about 21, so he must be the J W Wamble listed on the 1874 tax list and also those subsequent years. John Jobes Womble is not listed in the tax records after 1878 so he must’ve aged out. He’s is also listed in the 1880

U. S.

census living in the 11^th Civil District and in the Agriculture census renting his farm.

Conclusion

It would seem that because tax records were found for people of the same name or similar variation of the name J W Womble between the years 1870 to 1881 that even though my ancestor sold land in 1873 that he somehow eked out an existence in Hardeman County during a period in this country’s economic history that prior to the Great Depression of the 1930’s was considered the greatest economic crisis that the United States had ever faced.

However, it’s doubtful that John Washington Womble stayed on in Hardeman County after selling his land to P J Tranum. He was skilled as a tailor and likely believed that he could fall back on this by obtaining work in Nashville where he lived from 1874-1875. This scheme of course didn’t work out and he must’ve sorely underestimated the economic impact of the financial crisis’ impact on his ability to hold onto a job.

At this date, it’s still unclear whether or not he received the remainder of the money owed Tranum owed him. Nevertheless, he returned to Hardeman where his son, Adolphes, his daughter, Ellen and her husband, and his nephew John Jobes Womble were living and likely returned to farming, by renting land on which to farm. Possibly, when he moved away he was unsure of the likelihood of his ability to stay employed, so saved part of the money obtained from the land sale to Tranum and used this to rent land.

Miniature PI office

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Thu, 22 May 2014 21:50:00 +0000

I one of my other lives I worked in a toy store that also sold dollhouse supplies. In an issue of Dollhouse Miniatures magazine there was an article where someone had made a PI office. When I saw it, I immediately wanted to make it, but for some reason I didn’t. However, the idea of making it never left the back of my mind.

Years later, I obtained a copy of the article through interlibrary loan. The instructions called for making the office out of ½” thick foam core board. I searched around where I live and could never find any, so I knew that I’d have to find an alternative.

While working at the toy store, I had participated in a class where we were to make a garden inside a room box. All of our supplies were provided for us to create the garden; however, I never finished mine and instead it sat on a shelf in a closet for about a decade waiting for me to do something with it.

Contents of room box

When I finally got around to working on my PI office project, I decided to use the room box from my garden project. I pulled the box out of the closet and examined it to see what needed to be done before turning it into a detective office.

The box still had everything in it from the garden class. I found that the brick walls had been glued to the walls and that there was a “grass” covered thick piece of Styrofoam. I was able to remove everything except for the brick walls. These I tried at first to remove by sticking an X-acto knife or something similar behind it and wedging it from the walls of the box. This didn’t work, but I found that heating the brick walls with a hair drier heated up the glue that was holding in place enough for me to get a butter knife behind the walls and slowly peel them off.

In the process of removing the brick walls

After this arduous process, I found there were still remains of the glue on the walls. This I sanded off so that it wouldn’t interfere with my painting and papering of the walls. My next step was to make a wood floor for the office, which I did by using individual floor boards that had come from a pack that I’d obtained from my days working at the toy store.

The boards were a wonderful walnut color and I wasn’t sure if they would mesh well with my project. Because my idea had been that I would stain the floor to co-ordinate with the walls of the office. After cutting and gluing the boards to a piece of cardboard cut to fit the inside of the room box, I sanded it after the glue had dried. Then I searched through my stain samples to see what stain would work best. I chose Special Walnut as the color for the floor. I stained the floor very lightly so that the floor wouldn’t be too overly dark. After about 5-10 minutes I rubbed off the excess stain with a rag and then let it dry thoroughly overnight. The next day, I sanded the floor and tried to create worn spots on the floor by excessively sanding patches. I decided not to gloss the floor so as to maintain the impression of a very worn floor and was concerned that applying gloss would ruin this illusion.

I tested the fit of the floor in the box, and held off on gluing it in place because I wanted to add electricity. My plan for electrifying the room was to have a light in the bathroom area, a desk lamp, table lamp in the left corner, and a light in the hall that would be behind the back wall.

My plan with the electricity also involved figuring out how to arrange it so that the lights could be controlled independently. I tried to come up with different ways to do this, but nothing seemed to work mainly because I wanted to use tape wire. The only way that I came up with how to control the lights was to install a switch for each light or as I eventually decided every couple of lights. The bathroom and hall lights would be controlled by one switch each and then the desk and table lamps would be controlled with one switch.

Tape Wiring

Once the tape wire was installed along with the switches, I painted over any of the wiring that might show by painting over it with gesso. Incidentally, I left out the wiring for the bathroom light on purpose. It would be put in place later, after the back wall was installed.

After painting the Raw Sienna Acrylic on the lower part of the walls

After the gesso had dried, I painted the lower 3 ¾” of the walls with a faux wood finish using a coat raw sienna acrylic. This I let dry completely and then added another coat of a mixture of burnt umber acrylic paint and a gel staining medium. By applying the stain in the same direction as the paint it created a faux wood look. This staining method I duplicated on the back wall that was made out of mat board.

Next after the paint was dry I wallpapered the walls with miniature ceiling paper that had a stuccoed texture. This wallpaper was to have a smoky, well used appearance. To achieve this according to the article’s instructions, it needed to be covered with a light coat of raw sienna and gel medium mixture by brushing it on and then wiping it off. This technique turned out to be more difficult than it was described. I found it difficult to get the paint and gel medium mixture to spread evenly. Wiping the mixture off seemed to really mean scrub off even though that wasn’t what the instructions stated. However, the end product seemed to turn out well enough. The walls looked a bit darker than I remember, but since I didn’t have a color picture of the finished project, and was only going by my memory of what the office walls looked like I feel as though perhaps it’s my memory that’s faulty and not my painting of the walls.

I glued the floor to the inside of the room box once the paint on the wallpaper had dried. Then I began cutting and painting the wood strip that would be baseboards and trim for the windows, walls, and door. This trim was then glued to the back wall around the windows, door, and along the bottom to form a baseboard.

After the trim on the back wall was installed, I began trying to make faux hinges, door knob, and mail slot. At first, I wasn’t sure how I would accomplish making these things. My idea at first had been to just buy the needed items, but as it turned out I didn’t want to spend the money, so I decided to try and create them myself from scratch. I measured the hinges on my front door and scaled down the measurements to 1/12^th scale. Then I measured a miniature doorknob that I had on one of my other miniature structures. The mail slot was a little trickier because I didn’t have ready access to one. I have one on my door at work, but had no interest in making a trip over to my office just to measure the mail slot. Instead I just winged it and came up with measurements that I thought would be to scale with the room and door.

Round toothpicks turned out to be the perfect diameter to use as hinges and were cut to the needed length. The mail slot was cut out of a piece of cardboard as was the door plate for the door knob. A small key hole or impression of a key hole was poked into the cardboard. The end of a dowel was sanded into a rounded shape and then cut to the depth needed for a door knob. Another narrower dowel was added so that the door knob wouldn’t be flush against the door plate. All of the pieces for the doorknob including the doorplate were glued together and then the hinges, mail slot, and door knob were painted with gold metallic acrylic paint. Once the paint was dried the door hardware was installed on the office door.

The instructions called for adhering a piece of glass to the back side of the inner wall and after adhering the letters on the door’s window applying several coats of frosted window paint to create a frosted appearance. My idea was to instead adhere a piece of frosted acrylic plastic that I’d purchased for another project to the back of the inner wall and the lettering would be printed on a clear laser label which would be put over the door’s window opening.

This however didn’t work out. The label wasn’t large enough to cover the entire window and so I wound up copying the lettering onto tracing paper that I glued to the area around the door’s window. I glued an unlettered piece of tracing paper over the other windows so everything would match. The only hitch was that the door lettering was exposed and could be smudged. To prevent this, I glued another piece of acrylic over the tracing papered covered openings.

After the glue dried, I glued the wall in place along the long side of the floor about 2 inches from the back of the room box. Once this was dried, I glued the partition wall in place to the right of the door.

I mitered the ends of the 1/2” square strip wood that would trim the top interior walls of the room box and then painted the pieces to match the other wood in the room. I used clear tacky glue to glue each piece in place. Then cut and painted the baseboard and wainscoting trim to match. This was also glued in place using clear tacky glue.

I cut another piece of 1/2” square strip wood to fit under the top molding on the right side wall down to the floor and painted it as well. This I glued in place to the right wall to be in line with the partition wall. This would define the area where the bathroom sink and medicine cabinet will be. The plan is for this area to be a washroom for the office.

The semi-finished office

Next on my to do list is to fill in any gaps in the top molding using a dark brown polymer clay, to add the third light switch to the back of the room box for the washroom light. Lastly, I’ll work on making furniture and accessories for the detective office.

Research recap and where I’m headed part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 01:37:00 +0000

My last blog post was posted nearly towards the end of what had been an incredibly hot summer. I had returned from the FGS conference in Ft. Wayne, IN where I had found what I believe to be the ‘missing’ Womble child that died during the Civil War and was buried in a cemetery in Nashville, TN.

After finding this I wasn’t able to make any further headway with researching the family during the Civil War. I wasn’t sure exactly how to obtain the court records for Robert Carter being accused of stealing a coat from H F Myers’ store. I was curious as to what had happened with the land that the Womble family was living on in Hardin County, TN when the war started. Since I found pretty good evidence that John brought his family with him to Nashville during the Civil War, I wondered if they had returned to that same land after the war ended. While in Ft. Wayne I talked with people about what I had found out about the family’s experiences during the Civil War and asked how I could find out if they sold the land before leaving for Nashville or if it was more likely that they just never returned to Hardin after the war.

There is the possibility that the family did in fact return to Hardin after the war because the social security application of my great grandfather Albert Womble’s birth indicates that he was born there in 1866. However, his personal papers seem to suggest that towards the end of his life he was trying to locate his birth record and that supposedly he had learned that it may have been on file in Nashville.

It could also be that those notes I found of Albert trying to locate proof of when he was born are from when social security came into existence and he could’ve been concerned about trying to provide documentation of his birth so that he could begin receiving social security benefits. I think it more likely that he wanted to obtain documentation because I found delayed birth certificates for his sister, Maude and brother, Ernest.

The information from Albert’s social security application about his birthplace and date is Albert’s own knowledge. Even though, he was obviously present at his birth there’s no way he could’ve known the date or where he was. Only his mother would’ve known that information and presumably Albert’s father was present at the birth.

So when I asked about how I could find out if the Womble family returned to Hardin after the war, it was suggested that I look at tax records. I did a search on FamilySearch.org of available microfilms and then looked to see what was available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Nothing appeared to be available to me for Hardin County and I’m not and wasn’t at the time able to travel to Hardin to search for the records in the county courthouse. My attempt to get a book via interlibrary loan about the Civil War and post war life in Hardin County titled, No Man's Land: the Civil War and reconstruction in Hardin County, by Tony Hays didn’t pan out because it’s considered a reference book and so not available for interlibrary loan, so that part of my research project ended.

Then I began to think about attempting to hammer down the details of the family’s life in Hardeman County, Tennessee. I knew from census records both population schedules and agriculture and Nashville city directories that they lived in Hardeman for awhile moved back to Nashville and then a short time later returned to Hardman. They lived there for about ten years before relocating back to Nashville and both John Washington Womble and his wife, Rhoda Caroline died there in the city where they had married at the end of the Civil War.

My thinking with trying to learn more about the family’s Hardeman years was that if I was able to pinpoint when they arrived there then I could better figure out when exactly did they leave Nashville and did they ever return to Hardin as Albert’s social security application states.

In September 2013, I read a great article in the latest issue of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society’s Newsletter Westward into Nebraska. In it was an article about the Panic of 1873. The article didn’t mention any Wombles or John Washington Womble, but it got me thinking about the land that he sold in December 1873. The more I thought about that land the more I realized that I would have to transcribe the deed to figure out what was going on and what John W. Womble’s plans were. In the meantime, I ordered tax records for Hardeman County from the Family History Library for the years 1876-1880.

While waiting for the microfilm to arrive, I transcribed the deed where John Washington Womble sells 83 acres of land to P J Tranum on 29 December 1873. I had read through this deed many times and thought that I completely understood it; however, it wasn’t until I transcribed it that I saw what was really going on.

J W Womble deed 83 acres to P J Tranum

The first page of the deed states that J W Womble is selling for $930 83 acres of land to P J Tranum. $600 is paid to J W Womble upfront and 12 months credit is given to Tranum for the $330. So presumably, P J Tranum needed to pay the remaining money to my ancestor either within or after one years time.

I had thought in the past that John W went off to Nashville to work while his family lived in Hardman to work the farm and when his employment prospects failed he returned home before moving with the whole family to Nashville about ten years later. However, it seemed clearer that he was actually leaving Hardeman and his family would be going with him to Nashville. The article in Westward into Nebraska about the Panic of 1873 gave me the idea that there was a bit more to John’s land transaction with P J and that was that by accepting part of the money upfront and allowing the balance to be paid after a year suggests to me that John W Womble wasn’t sure how easily he could find a job in Nashville or even once he found a job-if he could hold onto it.

The confusion of John W Womble’s moving to Hardeman to Nashville and back to Hardeman comes in when I begin looking at tax records and combine those findings with road orders. If I took those records at face value, it would appear that John never left Hardeman County at all and never moved away to Nashville for a few years before returning to stay on in Hardeman for another ten years.

My suspicion was that I was dealing with multiple people with similar names that were listed in the tax records. In order to make sure that’s what I was dealing with I wound up ordering and viewing tax records from 1865-1880.

Womble, Wamble, and Wormble?!

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:11:00 +0000

So, if you’re a regular reader of my blog you may know that I’ve been trying to learn more about the Womble family’s Civil War experience. The family story is that John Washington Womble spent the Civil War working in Nashville, Tennessee as a tailor and left his children to fend for themselves in Hardin County, Tennessee. I’ve already reported about finding an interment record for who may possibly be his first wife, Mary Jane in the Nashville City Cemetery. I also located what I believe to be interments for two of his three children that were listed in the 1860 Hardin County, TN census, but no records seem to exist for them afterwards, until I found the cemetery information.

1860 U.S. Census, Hardin County, Tennessee, John W. Womble household

While working at a genealogy conference last week in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I took the opportunity to visit the Allen County Public Library and do some work on this family story. Whenever I’m researching the Womble family I keep in mind to be on the lookout for varying spellings of the family’s name. One of the spelling variations I’ve come across is Wamble.

At the Allen County Public Library I discovered another variation—Wormble—yes that’s right—Wormble. I was looking through a book that was an index of interments in the Nashville City Cemetery. I didn’t expect to find anything new, but I came across a Wormble, Frank. The other two Womble children I found listed in a Nashville City Cemetery interment database were just listed as infant Wamble. No ages were given for them except for the notation son and child of J. W. Wamble.

This notation gave me the impression that those listings were for the youngest two of the three “missing” Womble kids from the 1860 census. So my thought was where is the oldest of the three youngest kids, Franklin? I wondered if perhaps he died before John W. and Mary Jane relocated to Nashville. However, based on my finding it appears that Franklin died that same summer of 1861 along with his two youngest brothers.

I can’t believe that the family would’ve taken only the youngest children with them to Nashville when the war started. It was a different time back then and kids did grow up and take on adult responsibilities even when they were teenagers or pre-teens. However, leaving even teenagers to essentially fend for themselves in an uncertain era and a potentially dangerous environment coupled with the fact that I’ve found evidence suggesting that John W.’s wife and some of their children were in the city with him makes me think that the story isn’t true.

More research will have to be done on this to see if I can find anything else that may disprove my theory and prove the validity of the story.

Using Collateral Research to Verify Womble Civil War Story

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 22:18:00 +0000

Previously, I posted about wanting to find out if a family story was true. This was posted on this blog March 23, 2013. I’ve spent much of the summer trying to confirm the story’s validity by researching the H. F. Myers who co-signed John Washington Womble’s marriage bond to his 2nd wife, Rhoda Caroline Richardson.

My thought had been that by finding out more about this Myers guy, I would either learn some connection between him and John’s 2nd wife, or uncover a connection between Myers and my John W.

Census records revealed that H. F. Myers would’ve been a contemporary of John’s, since he was 36 in 1860 and John was about 42. Nashville city directories showed that Myers was a merchant and more specifically owned a tailor shop on Cedar St. in the city. The 1866 Nashville city directory lists John W. Womble’s profession as a tailor. His occupation is further backed up by other census records, city directory listings, and family lore.

However, I’m sure that there were many other tailor shops in Nashville in the early to mid-1860’s that could’ve employed my great-great grandfather. Yet, if John didn’t work for him then why would Myers co-sign a marriage bond for a man that he didn’t have any connection to?

I viewed land records that H. F. Myers purchased around the point in time when John would’ve been living in the area thinking that he might be listed as a witness. However, John wasn’t a witness to these records or at least that detail wasn’t recorded.

Shortly after the Civil War ended and after John and Rhoda married, H. F. Myers died. He left a will, but the will doesn’t mention John. Nor, is John mentioned as having witnessed Myers writing the will when it was presented in court. I still haven’t been able to view the court case of Robert Carter for stealing a coat from Myers’ store in May 1865. It may be that John didn’t witness the theft, because it occurred after he and Rhoda married, he may have been on his honeymoon or have left the city.

As a way to further my research I got a book via inter library loan on the occupation on Nashville during the Civil War. The book makes mention a few times that when the Confederate military was vacating the city and the Union troops were moving in that so many businesses were closed. The city streets were so void of people as if it were a Sunday.

Reading this made me wonder how John could’ve continued to live in the city without being able to go to work. However, the fact that he married there in 1865 seems to give evidence that he somehow was able to eke out an existence. Myers could’ve lost many employees as people enlisted in the military or vacated the city at the start of the war or later when the Union army took over. John could’ve decided to stay on in the city, because by the time that the Confederates were losing their hold on Nashville, his wife might have been too ill to travel back to their home in Hardin County. By sticking it out in the city, John could’ve shown his loyalty to Myers. This might have led Myers to co-sign John’s marriage bond to show his appreciation or gratitude.

There’s also the idea that when John initially worked as a tailor in Nashville that he didn’t work for Myers, but did later because his previous boss decided to close up shop and leave the city before the Union forces arrived.

Embroidery Projects Update Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Swamablog) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:42:00 +0000

In March, I finished cross-stitching Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum’s, “Once Upon A Time” that I plan to give to one of my sisters. The plan is to frame it and send it to her.

Since completing this project, I took up stitching a Greek Key rug again that I started back in 2004. A couple of years ago, I put this pattern into my cross-stitch design program and before resuming stitching, printed out the pattern which has made working on it a lot easier.

The original pattern is in sections that are in an old dollhouse plan. The rug is being stitched on 32 count linen over 1, so the stitches are very small. To make it easier to see, I’m using a magnifying lens that my husband bought me years ago to make stitching this easier. The rug will be put in the living room of the Green Gables house I made.

Another project that I’m working on is a needlepoint oriental rug kit that I bought back in 2003 at a miniatures show. At the time, I didn’t know where I would put it and only bought it because I’d seen kits like it at a dollhouse store I used to frequent as a kid. As time passed, I decided to put it in the daughter’s bedroom in the Lily house.

I’m trying to stop devoting myself to one embroidery project at a time, which is proving easier said than done. The Oriental rug is worked on 18 mesh canvas, so the stitches aren’t as small as the Greek Key. The pattern seemed fairly simple at first, so of late I’ve been working on it a bit more.

At first I thought that I would finish up with this kit quickly, but this idea disappeared very soon after realizing that this wasn’t the simple pattern I thought it was. When I started, I primarily used the picture of the rug as a guide instead of referring to the pattern constantly. Then I noticed that the design in the picture on one part of the rug varied slightly from the pattern and thought that it had something to do with the needlepoint stitch format. I was determined to be on the alert to match this discrepancy. However, as I worked it became apparent that it was just a mistake of the person who stitched the rug for the picture and wasn’t really meant to be in the finished product. So this meant that the pattern was completely correct.

This belief then proved to be wrong! As I continued stitching the design in the four corners of the center section I kept glancing at the pattern as I stitched. I then decided to begin stitching the darker blue line that goes around the outside of the center of the rug. This was when I realized that the pattern contained mistakes as well. The pattern painted on the needlepoint canvas clearly shows a white or ivory colored line that’s nearly continuous around the outside of the center section; however, on the pattern this color wasn’t shown in that part. Even though, the color ivory is represented in the very center part of the pattern. Nor, is it indicated that it be used again according to the pattern. Yet, both the picture and the painted design on the canvas indicate otherwise.

I’m very glad that I followed the advice of the pattern and started in the center and then worked outward because the directions warned me that if “adjustments” needed to be made then this would be easier. My thinking is that their definition of adjustment is really just synonymous with mistake.