Down the Rabbit Hole

                             In the Library- or as I like to refer to it- Down the Rabbit Hole.

Do you ever get into a store, filled with wonderful things, and your mind goes blank? You can't focus on the one thing that brought you there? You get excited by all the POSSIBILITIES!?

Asking for a friend... no, that won't work here.

Yea. Me too.

The Library has been and always shall be that place for me.

The helpful ladies and gentlemen at the desk can usually steer me in the correct direction, namely the resource desk. You can access all kinds of records, from the whole United States if you want to.

I want to- but it intimidates me on a HUGE level. Then I end up in the Historical Romance.... eh... I mean Non Fiction... stacks and that is that.

But I have found another place nearly as wonderful and I am sure many of you have already utilized it in your own quests.

The Mormon Church: or as they refer to it now- Latter Day Saints ( LDS) .

My Great Aunt Ruth Brendt in an angel costume.

Say what you want about the Saints, but their records are amazing.  Most larger LDS chapters have a Family History Center, (FHC). It is chock full of amazing records.

LDS Church, Salt Lake City

     They can give one on one service to patrons ( you don't have to be a LDS member to use it).

     They provide access to genealogical records via the internet- such as Ancestry, Family Search,  and other sites that you may have to pay for with a  membership fee - at FHC you can access them  for free.

They provide classes for researching too, ( depending on the Church location).

There are aver 4700 FHC in the country. To find one near you go to FamilySearch.org and click on Find a Family History Center, enter your country, state or place on the map and it shows you the closest FHC to that address.

I was able to order a rare book, have it sent to the local FHC and read it there. I was able to trace a lot of my McIntire history as well as my Cockrum history through that book. I found the book via the WIKI link site.

For me, because my attention span is sometimes like that of a black Crow in a room full of shiny objects, having a dedicated Library of just genealogy is a godsend. It narrows my focus, and provides me with people to turn to for questions and advice.

Oh the places I have yet to go!

Me and my baby sister on our pet burro, Cha Cha 1961

Unusual names and Anchor People

As I work my way through my genealogy tree, I have found some unusual names. I call these my  'Anchors'.

Thural D Berry age 7

For me, Anchors are the ones that have names so unusual it is easy to find them in records and other family trees. They stand out like a beacon in a census or a newspaper article, on a gravestone or in a diary. In a sea of Williams. Johns and Alice's, Anchors are a welcome relief.

If you have a common surname, you are praying for Anchors.

My surname is Berry. Pretty common, especially in the Ozarks and in Tennessee and Kentucky. There were lots of Berry's because they were having lots of children.  The Families lived deep in the woods, on the Current River, in the Ozarks and throughout the south. The settlements were remote and small; there weren't too many opportunities for selecting a mate. In other words, our gene pool was mighty shallow! Often a family of brothers married a family of sisters.
In my family if a brother died, another brother married his wife and took care of her children. Of course then they usually had more children. So the ol' family tree has some pretty twisted up branches and a lot of confusion.

My first Anchor in the Berry Family tree is Pridgen Berry. Born to Samuel Berry and Elizabeth Ann Melton, May 15, 1856. The path from myself to Pridgen is very straight forward,It's easy to keep his name straight in my mind and in my tree. But for cousins of mine, the path is a little more convoluted.
You see, Samuel and his brothers joined the Confederate Army. Sam died in the Battle of Franklin, November 1864,in Tennessee and Isaac was captured and sent to a Prisoner of War camp. As we know from previous posts, Isaac was allowed to leave once he swore not to take up arms against the Union ever again. Family legend has it that Isaac walked away from the POW camp, and never contacted his family again. Of course with the internet, we are now able to find him, but that isn't the story I'm telling.
Samuel was gone to war, but his younger brother, James Anderson Berry stayed home to help the family survive. Samuel and Elizabeth were married in May 1854. Their first daughter was born in 1854, but I don't know which month. Pridgen was born in 1856, and Isabella the 2nd daughter was born in 1859. Clementine, 3rd daughter was born in 1861, while Samuel was away at war. She was raised by Fereba Jane Benton Berry~ Samuel's son's Pridgen's wife's 2nd cousin. ( Fereba is another Anchor).
Now Samuel died November 1864. And Elizabeth married his brother James Anderson Berry very soon after and had a son, who she named James A Berry on Christmas Day 1864. She had 8 more children by James Anderson. Her last child was born in 1876. And to top it all off, she also cared for a step son- Henry Berry- born in 1839 to her 2nd husband James Anderson and his (?)Cousin Polly Holland.

Confused yet? I have a large piece of paper with my family tree filled in. I'm sure there are better ways- but I had to write the names all down, connected by lines and arrows. Notes decorate the margins. I still get confused!

You can see how glad I was that I come from Pridgens line!  I always had wondered about the strangeness of that name. When I finally had time to research the female side of the Berry family I found out.

Thural D Berry and William 'Cort' Berry. Circa 1954

Elizabeth's mother was Margaret Vester" Little Cloud" Benton, born in 1810 in Tennessee. ( Another Anchor), her mother was Lucy ( or Levy) Pridgen, born in 1746, Edgecomb, North Carolina. So to my delight I found it to be a family name.

Other Anchors are Mourning, Morning Star, Thural (my father- still don't know where that came from!) Henry Clay 'Au Nuk Ka Tah', and Judge Henry Clay. A lot of the men were named for revered Commanders in the Civil War or famous Political figures. The women had more sedate names, but Makhindra and Melvina do stand out from the rest.

So we can see that even though our current generation of baby makers are naming their children things like, ABCD, and Blanket, it is in no way a 20th or 21st Century trend.

And had I thought of it, I might have christened my children with names that would have made them Anchors too.

But perhaps Virginia and Amelia are just 'old fashioned' enough to qualify!

First~ Getting started

52 Ancestors

I am creating a new blog for a special challenge. The challenge is to take 52 ideas about my ancestors, week by week and add them, after the year ends, to my genealogy pages. Sounds simple enough, but of course it won't be.
Oh I'll begin just fine, but then the weather will get warm and I will want to be outside and in the garden or on my horse- so giving myself this blog also gives me permission to take a few minutes out of each WEEK and write to the weeks prompts.

Wish me luck!

The first prompt is -- FIRST.

Everyone needs to begin somewhere, and the 'go to' first would of course be myself. Ego, Id, self, etc. BUT I am going to begin with the first time I thought about my past, my genealogy.
It would have to be me, under the kitchen table listening to my parents and grandparents telling family stories. Stories of each of their sister, uncles, relatives, grandmothers and grandfathers. I listened with rapt attention, but because I wasn't suppose to be in the room ( little pictures have big ears) I had to sit quietly and not ask questions.
Not ask questions about why my two Great Aunts have wildly different names from the ones they were born with. Not ask questions about where their mother had been. Not ask questions about why Great Uncle Isaac walked away from the Civil war battlefield and was never seen again. Not ask questions about the coffin in the ice house, the run away team through the grape vineyard, my grandfather living in a box to finish high school, or why my grandmother was on her own at age 14.

I have been searching for these answers for a very long time, and only now are some of those questions being answered after searching, slogging, picking my way through many, many pages of documents.
How much easier it would have been to be able to just ask Granny about her father and mother. Or ask Grandfather about his runaway mother.
The first questions would have begun with, " Why?"
Why did they marry?
Why did they Divorce?
Why did Great Grandmother Die?
Why didn't anyone go looking for Isacc?
The question of why begs to be answered with feelings; and feelings are lost among the papers of the past. No one can delve the mind of a long dead relative, one can only speculate. I suppose that is why it is at the end of the long list of questions you are suppose to ask to tell any story.
Who, What, When, Where and WHY.

If anyone reading this blog is involved in the 52 Week Challenge, or is just interested in genealogy, let that be the first question that you ask any living relatives. Let that be the driving question as you write your missives to future generations.
Why you fell in love.
Why you got a divorce.
 Why you moved across the country, the continent, the town.
Tell us the only thing we cannot endeavor to answer correctly for ourselves.
It may be painful, or shameful or thrilling to you, but in a few years our children's children will want to know. They will need to understand.
Let that be your legacy to them.