My mother passed away in July 2020, and since then, I have been busy finding stuff about the family history of both my parents. Over 100 blog posts have been written, and after a review of what I’ve written, it is warranted that I do a complete rewrite of my book Gathering Leaves. In preparation for this work, I have tried to put all the … Continue reading List of Blog Posts in Semi-Chronological Order
Although my Southern ancestors on my mother’s side settled in the British colonies sometime before the Revolution, the question of when they arrived and where they first settled is challenging and, in some cases, controversial. Nevertheless, I have found one branch, the Morgan family, that is well documented. In contrast, other branches lack sources for events before the American Revolution. I recently viewed the primary … Continue reading The Carolina Connection
Following up on a previous post I wrote about Marietta Georgia and my third great-grandfather David Dobbs, I discovered that on at least one and possibly two occasions, David, a Colonel in the Georgia militia, had a prior association with General Sherman. Searching the newspaper archives for “Marietta” in November 1864, I wanted to see what the contemporary reports were about the town at the … Continue reading Marietta, 1844
On October 3, 1862, my great-great-grandfather, Francis Gaume, enlisted under the name Frank Gaume, at the age of 17, as a Private at Mansfield, Ohio, in Company “I” of the 19th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI). During this time, the state of Ohio was in a panic over the possibility that Confederate forces would soon invade. The Governor of Ohio had offered a … Continue reading The Nineteenth Ohio Speaks
On July 4, 1864, the town of Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia fell to union forces under the command of Gen. Sherman. My great-grandfather, James M Dobbs, Sr. turned five years old on that day. He and his family lived on a plantation outside of Marietta. His grandfather Col. David Dobbs lived in the town in a large fancy house with three orphaned grandchildren, and a … Continue reading Marietta, 1864
I realized the other day that my subscription to the New York Times gives me access to 150 years of archives of that newspaper. At first, I wanted to see the NYT’s take on events such as the Bloody Monday riot in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1855, the fall of Atlanta in 1864, and the destruction of Aspinwall, Panama in 1885. Then I recalled that my … Continue reading Chile Won’t Drink Our Beer
Aspinwall, Panama was a wild-west town deserving of the same notoriety as Dodge, Kansas; Tombstone, Arizona; and Deadwood in the Dakotas. According to David McCullough in his masterpiece on the building of the canal, “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal (1870-1914), “the three most thriving industries [in Aspinwall] were gambling houses, brothels, and coffin manufacturing.” Years ago, I found my … Continue reading Panama Man
Here is an excerpt from Gathering Leaves, A Brief History of Montécheroux, France: My French-speaking ancestors, who lived in eastern France and western Switzerland, were neither citizens of France nor of Switzerland until after the French Revolution. They came from the region that today is within the French department of Doubs and the modern Swiss Canton of Jura. The area is approximately midway between the … Continue reading A Brief History of Montécheroux
Recherches historiques sur la ville de Renaix, published in 1856, is a book I found at Google Books (see here). The book, written in French, provides the history of the city of Renaix (Ronse), where my father’s Belgian ancestors lived for several centuries before coming to America. Although I studied French for five years and occasionally take lessons at Rosetta Stone through access provided by … Continue reading History of the City of Renaix (Ronse)
Yesterday, I wrote about rediscovering a website called “molenechos.org” and how I located two watermills owned by one or more of my ancestors. The search engine on the website is a little tricky, but I think I figured out how to successfully search for surnames. I searched for the surname “De Backer.” (Note the space; this is how it is spelled in Belgium.) The search … Continue reading More Mills
Gathering Leaves 