Obituaries are your friend

This weekend, I spend what ended up being 4+ hours (amazing how time flies when you're buried in microfilm!) at the McIver's Grant Public Library in Dyersburg, Tennessee, digging through their archives of the State Gazette. It's too bad they don't have their catalog on the internet and that genealogy room is a jackpot of genealogical data disguised as a mess, but I digress. I was able to print out obituaries for 20 family members from my Presley/Gamble side, the oldest for Susan Reagan Gamble/Gambell, wife of James Jefferson Gamble/Gambell (our current oldest known Gamble ancestor) dating from 1916. I had really hoped to find one for Thomas Parker Presley, but, wouldn't you know it, they last issue they had for 1908 was one week shy of his death and they didn't have another issue until 1913. Didn't find one for the missus, either, which was a disappointment as I really wanted some solid information on their origins and possibly her parents or siblings.

I found one for Minnie Gambell. She was listed as Millie Gambill (a couple of the family were spelled that way, adding to the already confusing family spellings), but it also misspells her maiden name as Riggins and not Wiggins. Her obituary listed two brothers, Jesse Riggins and Joe Eddie Riggins. It also listed four sisters..

Billy Bivens' obit includes two sisters, Ella Cole (which fits with the 1880 US Census listing of a younger sister, Ella) and a Mrs. Henry Asbridge which I shall look into. With Ella being named here, I'm more confident in Fanny being his mother's name (or nickname most likely...What was it with people back then, no one went by their real name...I swear EVERY Sarah in my family tree born before 1950 went by Sallie....Why not just name the girl Sallie?!). So I still have to find his father. His obituary also supports his death certificate listing of place of birth as Arkansas. I've still got both dates/places included in my information, but now I have a stronger incentive to hunt for his family in the 1870 census in Arkansas.

Overall, these obituaries were able to provide me with a lot of missing maiden names, exact dates of death & burial as well as names of previously unknown siblings and where they lived. My biggest disappointment was not finding Lumey Smith Presley's obituary, but I can probably just ask someone in the family for it, there are bound to be copies in the family somewhere. That, and I still need to visit the library in Brownsville which I'm pretty sure is where she died.

World War I draft registration

A big thank you to Ancestry.com for the free sample access to their database of World War I draft registration cards and images. This is a tremendous resource that is almost like a census for males between 18-45 in 1917-1918 in the US. Not only do they usually contain the full first, middle & last names of those listed, but since they were actually the ones to fill out the forms, you get their correct spellings as well as their actual signature (if they could write). I've cited them as sources for as many as I could find (20-30 or so), so you'll find them scattered throughout those born between 1874-1902 in the tree.

He's dead, Jim.

About a month ago, I found Tennessee Death Certificates which offers several services including copies of TN death certs from 1908-1954 for only $4 each ($6 cheaper than the TN State Archives). So far, I've received certificates for Martha Minton, Thomas Jefferson Gamble, Minnie Wiggins, Billie Bivens, and James Richard Presley. Those are now added to my first record, that of Clarissa (or Clarissy) Bowles Minton.

What information did these give me? Martha Minton's record gave me a specific date for her death. Prior to that, I only had the year from her gravestone at Fairview Cemetery.

Thomas "Jeff" Gamble's record gave me dates that I'd only previously had from the report put together by my great Aunt Sue and Charles E. Gambell. The birth date is different on the certificate, so I included both on his record in the tree.

On the certificate for Minnie Wiggins Gamble, first wife of Jeff Gamble, her father was listed as A. T. 'Riggons' and her mother as Miss Jackson. So it adds the Jackson name to the tree, but I'll need to do a bit more digging on the Wiggins line. My grandmother and her sisters all know their grandmother as a Wiggins, so 'Riggons' looks like a mistake. In any case, I haven't been able to find any of the Wiggins family in the census (probably because I just don't know where to look).

Billie Bivens record gave me his exact birth & death dates as his gravestone only listed the years, but unfortunately, his parents' names weren't listed.

James Richard Presley's record finally gave me a concrete source for his parents' names. My father had talked with my great-great grandmother, Lumey Smith Presley, and sketched out as much of the family tree as she knew, and since then I'd been hunting for some documentation for the information on there.

Family @ Find A Grave

Over on the side, I've added links to family graves I've added at Findagrave.com. Findagrave offers people a chance to visit a "virtual" version of graves at which they can leave flowers or notes just like a real cemetery, only the notes don't blow away and the flowers don't dry up and get run over by the groundskeeper! I've been using Findagrave for just about two years. I started just adding the graves of family, but since I was at the cemeteries anyway and had my camera, I decided to take a few extra photos to help out those who may not be able to get out to the cemetery to visit their family. From there I ended up covering whole cemeteries for my home, Madison County, Alabama.

I tried to include the grave of the oldest ancestor I could find and, in most cases, that entry will link to all of their descendants who have entries on the site. So if you click on Thomas P. Presley, his page will include links to his wife's entry and the entries of his children. This can also lead you to other branches of the family...if you follow the link to his son James Richard, you can then link over to James' wife Lumey and then back up and down the Smith & Minton lines.

And away we go...

This site will be dedicated to documenting my research into my ancestry. Since I couldn't seem to motivate myself enough to put together a full blown website, I decided a blog served my purposes just as well, and took most of the work out of it. My main four ancestral lines are the Rooks & Brockett families of Cherry Valley, Arkansas and the Presley and Gamble families of Dyer County, Tennessee.

For anyone who is interested, I've posted my family tree at Rootsweb's WorldConnect:
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=daclyde

I've also entered all of the graves I've visited at FindAGrave.com (more on that in later posts).

And I currently maintain the Cross County, Arkansas ARGenWeb page at:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~arcross

I'm not sure how organized this site will be, but I'll try to keep it up as much as possible.