Spiegel

How Does One Lose 15,600 Cigars?

I found a court case involving my great-great-grandfather, George C Spiegel. This occurred in mid-1872, before the family left Savannah for Dallas. In that year, George was a cigar maker living in Savannah Georgia. The events described in these court documents from the Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia Court, took place a few months before my great-grandmother was born. I discovered these items in an ancestry.com … Continue reading How Does One Lose 15,600 Cigars?

Unknown's avatarD. M. DeBacker1 Comment
Dobbs

On Down the Tallapoosa to the Gulf of Mexico

As I mentioned in an earlier post from about six months ago, I have been working on a complete rewrite of Gathering Leaves (and not just another edition.) My goal is to eliminate repetition, remove superfluous minutia, and strip out all the endnotes (I admit I was in competition with Edward Gibbon for most endnotes ever.) In addition to there being deletions, there are also … Continue reading On Down the Tallapoosa to the Gulf of Mexico

Unknown's avatarD. M. DeBacker1 Comment
Dobbs

Three Valuable Sawmills for Sale

Here is something interesting that I found regarding a third great-grandfather on my mother’s side. His name was Evan Prothro (1788-1864), a.k.a. Evan the Planter, grandson of Evan the Patriot, and father of my great-great-grandmother, Martha Josephine Prothro. He was a plantation owner and slaveholder who lived in the upcountry in South Carolina near Aiken and across from Augusta on the Georgia side of the … Continue reading Three Valuable Sawmills for Sale

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Memoirs

My Mother’s Memoir – Part Three

Not too long before my mother passed away, she wrote her memoirs on three-hole punch college ruled paper along with photographs and assembled the contents in a 2-inch three-ring binder which she then passed on to me. I have decided to transcribe and present her memoirs here thus allowing her to have her voice heard. The First 50 Years of My Life1928 to 1978Dorothy Patricia … Continue reading My Mother’s Memoir – Part Three

Unknown's avatarD. M. DeBacker1 Comment
Family

That Was Too Easy!

I have found my mother in the U.S. Census for 1950. This time I used the “official” website for the 1950 census (https://1950census.archives.gov/), where they have used “machine learning (AI)” to extract names from the enumeration sheets to build a searchable index. Here, I searched for “Patricia Dobbs” in Washington DC, and I got a few hits for Dobbs or Hobbs, one of which was … Continue reading That Was Too Easy!

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Family

Another Find in the 1950 US Census

I have located one other great-grandparent in the 1950 US Census. It was not difficult to find my great-grandmother, Catherine “Beanie” Kollros, because I knew the address of her home in Louisville, Kentucky. She and my great-grandfather, Jojo Kollros purchased a home in Louisville in the early 1920s. During the Great Depression, they almost lost the three-story house and they began taking in boarders. To … Continue reading Another Find in the 1950 US Census

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Spiegel

Found One!

It has been a couple of weeks since the United States Census for 1950 was made available to the public after a 72-year wait. Although it is freely available on several family history websites such as ancestry.com and familysearch.org, there is still a lack of indexes that makes it very difficult to find particular individuals without knowing their address and being able to reference that … Continue reading Found One!

Unknown's avatarD. M. DeBacker2 Comments