Google

Google is a great tool in genealogical research.  Every once in a while I will just google a name and I am blown away by what I can find.  This past week I was doing some research on the Woodson line, and I googled the name of my great grandfather’s brother.  His name was James Sloan Woodson.  Here is part of what I found.  This is a picture of James Sloan Woodson and his wife Harriet Eveline Hendrix Woodson.  They were the parents of 13 children.  They are as follows:

Dau: Olivia “Ollie” Woodson (1871-) (m John D Judy, Auxvasse, MO)
Son: William A Woodson (1872-) (m Susan E Paden, Bachelor, MO)
Dau: Mary Viola Woodson (1873-) (m Harp Dudley, El Monte, CA)
Son: James Lewis Woodson (1875-) (m Eva Mumford, Shamrock, MO)
Son: David Rudy Woodson (1877-) (m Lena Gertrude Meador, Bachelor, MO)
Dau: Eunice Woodson (1878-) (m Ernest R Meador, Mexico, MO)
Dau: Cecelia “Celia” Woodson (1881-) (m ? Griffin, El Monte, CA)
Son: Jesse S Woodson (1884-1929) (m Mary Etta Bishop, Shamrock, MO)
Son: John Woodson (1885-) (m Ethel Boswell, CA)
Dau: Nannie “Nina” Woodson (1887-) (m Leslie G Boswell, Moberly, MO)
Dau: Susan “Susie” Woodson (1891-) (m George Miller, Belverdear Garden, CA)

This is a picture of them and their first seven children.  I have tried to contact the submitters of these pictures, but their emails have bounced back.  I am also including a picture that I already had of James Sloan and his sister Ann Effie Jackson.  Try googling someone in your ancestry and see what you find!

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The Carnes Family

These photos are of the family of Joseph Milton Carnes and Mary Catherine Webb.  They had eleven children, nine who survived to adulthood.   There are so many great stories about this family, I don’t know where to start.  This family was the epitomy of a Texas pioneer family – a part of the rough and tumble wide open frontier.  My great-grandmother, Lola Lillian Carnes, is the front left woman in the picture of the girls.  The other day as I was going through family notes that we have, I saw an article by a columnist in the Houston post.  He interviewed Webb McNeill Carnes about his grandfather, David Franklin Webb.  Webb Carnes is the young boy in the front in the picture of the boys.  He ended up passing away the same year that this interview was done.I have attached a picture of the article.  I hope it is readable.  It is a great story.  Along with that story I found a post-it note with more notes about my great-grandmother and Webb.  I am attaching that also.  I have more stories about this great family that I will share another day.

 

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Find A Grave

If you haven’t seen the website of find a grave yet, you should hurry over and take a look!  This is a great website that covers cemeteries worldwide.  People can set up memorials and pictures for their ancestors in the cemetery that they were buried in.  There is a volunteer system involved where you can sign up to take pictures of the graves that are in your area.  When you set up a memorial for your ancestor, you can request someone in that area to take a picture of the grave stone.  So, I signed up a few months ago, but only signed up last week to take pictures for others.  I have already taken three up at East Lawn Cemetery in Provo, Utah.  The bad thing about East Lawn is that I can’t get hold of anyone to find a map of the cemetery.  I have spent about two hours this week wandering the cemetery, and only found three out of eight graves for people who would like pictures.  Today, I went back to look for more graves, and I did find one.  The really neat thing that happened today was, while I was at the cemetery, there was someone at a cemetery in California taking a picture of my great grandmother’s grave stone!  Here is the picture of what I received today, along with a picture of Lydia May Taylor to go along with it.   Lydia May Taylor was married to my great-grandfather, Orean Sale Trabue.  Later she married George R. Clark, thus the name on her grave stone.

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Asbury Cemetery

Last summer we went to Illinois and went cemetery hopping in Morgan County.  We had so much fun.  We found the headstones of many ancestors.  Asbury cemetery was a little tricky to find.  When we finally found it, it had a little chapel in the front of it.  The cemetery was fenced in and locked.  There was a number that you could call to have them come unlock it.  We decided to forego the phone call and just climb over the fence.  There, in this small cemetery, was a large headstone for my 4th great grandparents!

George Taylor and Mary (or Polly) Ellen Tucker.  In front of the cemetery was a little country church that is still used.  Actually, I think that the cemetery is still used too.  Here are some pictures of the headstones and the church in front.

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Relatives on the Internet

The Internet has been great for finding relatives. I have come into contact with some wonderful relatives on the Internet. We have shared stories and pictures and made connections. I wish I could meet more of them in person. I have loved the experience of meeting some of them! One of the relatives that I met on the Internet had the same 4th great grandparents as I do. She shared so many pictures with us. This is a picture of my 4th great grandmother Mary Rebecca McKinney Myers. She was known as “Molly”.  She was born on 2 March 1845 in Panola County, Mississippi.  She died in Beeville, Texas in 1891.  She married Green Benjamin Myers and had eight children.  I have a picture of her husband’s headstone, but not hers. There are a lot of places where you can connect with relatives.  We use Ancestry.com for one.  You can make queries through their message boards or through public family trees.  We have had a lot of success that way.  Another website is genforum.com  Here you are able to look at a lot of message boards of people trying to contact relatives.  You can search by surname or locality.  It is certainly worth a try and you never know what you will find!

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John Naggas

John Naggas was my grandpa. He grew up on the beautiful island of Zakynthos in Greece. He left when he was about sixteen. If I remember right he had a few siblings die from yellow fever and it was hard on him to see his mother so sad. He went to a cousin in Patras, Greece who helped him book a voyage to the United States. When I was a little girl, I used to tell people that he was a stow-away. It sounded much more exciting that way! He arrived at Ellis Island on May 20, 1912. He married my grandmother, Effie Ann Woodson, in October of 1928. They lived in Monrovia, California, and had one child, my mother Dolores. He was a green grocer, which meant he had a little truck that he would take through neighborhoods and sell produce. He died when I was about 13 years old from emphysema. Here are some pictures of him and also a painting that my father painted of him with his produce truck.

This is how I remember them.

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Clarifications

My great-grandfather, Reuben Canterbury Woodson, lived most of his life on the farm in Shamrock, Missouri.  He is pictured in the previous post with his wife, Mahala.  After Mahala died in 1927, he moved to Huntington Beach, California.  He is shown in the 1930 census in Huntington Beach with his son, Harry.  Here is a picture of them in 1930 at their home.   Reuben died in 1935, and was buried in El Monte, California.  He was not able to be buried with his wife – though he already had his name on her headstone.  Harry died a few years later in 1939 and was buried next to his father.  Here are pictures of the two headstones for the same man. It is always good to clarify these things for future generations so it won’t be such a mystery to them. I was able to visit this cemetery in Missouri and was quite surprised to see Reuben’s name on the headstone. I had already found a picture of his “real” headstone on find-a-grave.com. Once I thought it out logically it made sense, but very few people would realize what actually happened. I am sure that it would have been very expensive to ship his body back to Missouri to be buried with his wife. This was in the middle of the depression.

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Missouri Farmhouse

This is the farmhouse that my grandma grew up in in Shamrock, Missouri.  The couple on the front porch is my great grandparents – Reuben Canterbury Woodson and Mahala Ann Payton Woodson.  I have better pictures of them, but there is something that I really like about this picture.  I had the wonderful privilege of being on this property last summer.  The house was gone, but another had been built in its place.  It is still out in the middle of nowhere, but it is beautiful there.  I had never envisioned it being so green!  Maybe that is why the town was called Shamrock.  Our guides for this tour were Grandma’s nephew and his wife.  They took us for a Sunday drive out through to the farm, where she went to school, and where she went to church.  We also went to the cemetery where many of the family were buried.  What a great trip we had!

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Andrew William Trabue

I found this picture this winter while going through pictures at my mom’s house.  Andrew William Trabue is my great great grandfather and this is the only picture that I have ever seen of him.  Andrew Trabue was born on 22 Feb 1850 in Woodford County, Kentucky.  He  married Lucy Jane Proctor on January 10, 1871 in Jessamine County, Kentucky. I can find him in several censuses, but I cannot find him in the 1910 census.  In 1900 he is in Fort Osage, Missouri, and in 1930 he is in Los Angeles, California.  Maybe he was moving in 1910.  I went through all the pages in Fort Osage, Missouri and he is not there.

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Four generations

This picture only has three generations, but the next one has four.  The people in this picture are,  l to r back row:

Elizabeth Ribelin Taylor

Lydia Taylor Trabue

l to r front row:

Pearl Esther Trabue Myers

Jack Orean Trabue

Pearl Esther Trabue Myers is my grandma on my dad’s side.   I love old pictures like this!  This other snapshot actually has four generations.  They are mostly the same people as in this one and they go as follows:

l to r: Pearl Trabue Myers holding Doris May Myers, Lydia May Taylor Trabue, holding grandson, Quirl Burton Myers, Elizabeth E. Ribelin Taylor.  Quirl Burton Myers is my dad.

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