Thursday, November 17, 2011

Ancestry Research Mixed With Fishing

Well for the past three days I have been in Mississippi trying to catch some crappie with my brother. The first day we battled high winds and only got a couple of nips and that was it for an afternoon outing. We decided to change lakes on the second day and moved to the upper smaller lake only to find the wind was gusting above 20, so we didn’t even bother to launch the boat. So both days as far as fishing was concerned was a complete washout -----but not quite as far as one of my objectives were concerned.
That objective was my work on our family tree. I have been working on this project for the past year and have really got into the Ancestry thing. I suggested to my brother we travel back to our old home place.  Choctaw County Mississippi was where both of us were born. I wanted to try to complete some of the information I was missing to finish my research. We spent the better part of the day at three different cemeteries locating individuals dating back to the early 1800s. I have traced and have photos of tombstones of our Great Great Grandfather and Grandmother. Beyond that, I am using Ancestry.com to find the other generations. This has been one of the most interesting things I have ever worked on and I've learned a lot about our heritage. For those of you who have never attempted this, I suggest you give it a try, you might be amazed at what you find out about your heritage.
This is the headstone of my Great Great Grandfather--this grave was in the family plot by their old home place
My Great Grandfather's gravesite in a local cemetery in Mississippi
I hope I didn't bore you guys with this post.

14 comments:

  1. That is some really cool stuff. Sometime there are searches more important than finding a few fish :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not boring at all :) I always wonder what my ancestors were like. I would like to think I could be back to having Native American heritage, but there is no telling for sure. Maybe I will have to use ancestory.com to do some research. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sanders
    I have always been interested in history, and this has been an added bonus. thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  4. Trout
    Interesting you should say that concerning Native American-very proud heritage---thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awesome post Bill! Fascinating stuff. I've been thinking about tracing my ancestry and this post has motivated me to follow through with that.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ty
    If you ever start the research you will be hooked. It is really interesting. thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's a lot of fun. I've traced my ancestors back to the 1800's too. Then I got side tracked by something called FISHING and turned it over to my son. He can run with it now.

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  8. Mark
    Keep working on your heritage, who knows how far you can go back. Glad to know there is a fellow blogger out there into the family tree thing. thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  9. Bill, I can't think of a better way to spend the day, especially if the fish aren't cooperating. Cool stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Cofisher
    Between the blog family and my family tree, means I am going to be fairly business this winter. thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  11. Very interesting. I am fortunate that I have a complete family history from my mom's side back to England thanks to an uncle who did the leg work and printed and bound copies for everyone in the family. My dad's side of things is a bit more of a mystery. Seeing the actual graves of ancestors makes it all more real than just seeing it in print though.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Jay
    You are very fortunate to have records that far back. I am as far back as the late 1700’s. One of the problems you encounter at that point is the names of individuals. A lot of the censes reports during that era show no names of children and sometimes the spouse’s name is missing. Of course the name itself is the key to tracing the generations. I still have a lot of work to do.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's important to know where you come from. We just went through tracing back our generations. Not a big fan of hard wind either.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Blake
    So you know what is involved in the research. I should be finished before fishing season next year. thanks for the comment

    ReplyDelete