knoxcotn-digest Sunday, January 9 2000 Volume 01 : Number 040

 

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 01:27:50 -0800

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: Re: [KnoxCoTN] 1840 Knox co Census

Hi, Margaret! Can't help you on Fergusons, but I can suggest you check

deed and tax records. Deeds from Day 1 are at the courthouse. Tax records

are held by the Knox County Archives, on the second floor of the East

Tennessee Historical Center.

Also, check burials -- next time you're at McClung (gentle correction --

ETHS just rents offices downstairs in the building), look through the

cemetery transcription cards that Robert McGinnis donated -- they're awesome!

http://web.utk.edu/~kizzer/ethisctr/ has details about the entire building.

Have you corresponded with Don Mabry in Mississippi? He's done tons of

research on Mabry (variants) in East Tennessee.

 

At 05:58 PM 1/8/00 -0600, Margaret Mabrey wrote:

>I am new to the list and I am searching for FERGUSON's of Knox co, Tn.

>Andrew Ferguson in particular. I stopped at the ETHS in Knoxville a few

>weeks ago to look at the microfilm of the 1840 census, to try and determine

>what part of the county this Andrew Ferguson was in. He is on pg 56 I

>think. but when I found him, the heading of the census was listed as

>'Eastern Tennessee', and up the left hand margin vertically was written,

>'Knox Co,'. This indicates to me that more than one country was done at

>this time. How will I determine where this Andrew Ferguson Lived? Is there

>anyone on this list that is knowledgeable enough about families to know

>where Pg 56 was located?

>Thanks

>Margaret Long Mabrey

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 01:30:36 -0800

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: Re: [KnoxCoTN] Searching for Will of SULSER

Hi, Tami -- Knox County wills are now under the jurisdiction of the Knox

County Archives. If you'll send them $5 to cover copies and postage, they

should whip out a copy to you! Details about the archives is at

http://web.utk.edu/~kizzer/ethisctr/kcarch.htm

 

At 09:05 PM 1/8/00 -0500, Tami Ramsey wrote:

>Hello Everyone;

>I'm rather new to the list but hope all of you will tolerate a newcomer long

>enough to answer a few questions for me. In a book titled "Index to Early

>Tennessee Wills & Administrations" it has listed SULSER, Mathias, 1793, Will

>Book 1 Page 9 Knox County Tennessee....I was rather excited to find this

>because if the Will names his children I might have found my missing

>link....(my heart goes pitter patter) Is there anyone that might like to

>trade some courthouse time to do a look up for me? I'm close to Montgomery

>County, or Pulaski County VA courthouses....maybe someone has a book that it

>might be listed in?? I'm grasping for straws but I'm a desperate woman!!

>(tee-hee) Thanks everyone for your time....

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 10:52:15 -0600

From: "Judith Mayfield" <judymay@email.msn.com>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Douglass - Routh

Am searching for parents of Alexander Douglass who married Rhoda Routh in

Knox Co, TN 1820.

Thanks.

 

Judy Mayfield

Pearland, TX

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 12:47:17 -0800

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 09 Jan 2000 Installment - Sunday Afternnoon Rockin'

The latest musings from Jan Philpot. Enjoy ...

===================================================================

Afternoon all,

Well, I hesitate to embark on the subject all media seems already to have

disected and scrutinized in every way possible, but then just maybe no one

has exactly talked about the new millenium and the turn of a century in

quite the same way most of us would be considering it...maybe no one has

rocked about it on the front

porch...you think??

One hundred years...sounds like such a very long time, and yet a very short

time too. Now that I am fast approaching half that, does not seem that it

can be so long at all. Doesn't really seem so long ago I ran up and down

the dusty roads of Tip Top, pigtails flying, Old Ring at my heels...not

really. And so twice that period of time cannot be so long...can it?

A hundred years such as the hundred which have been, in actuality is more

than a thousand of previous years...in terms of changes it is.

Some things would be true with every century that has ever passed for our

people. Within a hundred years we have lost a lot of folks in our families,

many we never knew...yet a hundred years is not so long that we do not know

who they are, and have heard stories of them. Within a hundred years we

have welcomed a lot of folks in our families, some we are responsible for

bringing into the world. Within a hundred years a lot of tears have been

shed, a lot of hours have been spent on knees, a lot of laughter has warmed

a family's rooms, and a lot of changes have taken place.

But a hundred years such as this hundred...is something entirely different.

The world we know is far more different than another country would have been

to our folks of one hundred years ago.

Yes, in a manner of speaking, a hundred years is a very long time. A

hundred years ago my grandmother wore dresses to her feet and shirtwaists

that buttoned firmly at her throat and her wrists...she would do so for

another twenty years. A hundred years ago my grandfather had a buggy and a

wagon, and this is what he traveled in... he would do so for another forty

years...and never own an automobile. A hundred years ago my family had never

seen light other than that produced by kerosene or a fire, had never known

heat other than that from a fireplace or a wood stove, had never known what

running water was other than that they pulled from a well. A hundred years

ago my family was nursed on the herbs and woodland plants my grandmother and

great grandmother knew how to make into medicines. A hundred years ago my

family knew death as a regular visitor when those medicines failed, as did

yours. A hundred years ago my family depended on barter for the goods they

could not produce themselves, as did most of yours. A hundred years ago my

folks still knew living folks who could speak of the Battle of Fort Donelson

and even of the natives that had lived on the land before them, and so did

yours. A hundred years ago none of my family had traveled more than fifty

miles from home since the first pioneers of the family settled the

area...and that is true of many of your folks as well.

Within a hundred years we have lost folks in two World Wars, and several

others besides...some never to return. Within a hundred years those same

wars took boys from this tiny pocket of "safe" civilization and opened their

eyes for the first time to just how tiny was the corner of the world in

Stewart Co. Within a hundred years our folks have known migrations that

flung the family to the farthest portions of the United States and even the

world. In this century our people saw an automobile for the first time,

marveled over a telephone, gazed unbelievingly at an airplane, realized for

the first time how small the world was when they saw it literally step right

out of a tiny box and into their living rooms.

Within a hundred years we have moved from an agrarian society of folks who

made their living from the land and depended upon their own self-sufficiency

and the caring of their neighbors to survive...into an industrial age in

which people moved around a bit and learned in factory cities a different

culture from that they had always known before...and then into a

technological world... where you and I converse around the world on a daily

basis at the speed of light, where you and I, many of us cousins learning we

come from the same cabin household of over a hundred years ago, have finally

been able to make that connection lost generations before...and be family

again.

A hundred years ago, all of my people, maternally and paternally with the

exception of only a very few families, lived in Stewart County...it was

bursting at the seams with folks who were my ancestors or closely

connected...and today I can count on four fingers my closest blood kin that

yet lives, and lives there. More populate the cemeteries than live. Within

a decade I will more than likely have only one first cousin once removed

still where my people settled in the late 1700's and early 1800's....and

very few that close or closer blood-kin anywhere at all, other than those I

brought into the world myself. But something has taken the place of

that...and my family is now larger than ever before.

I have often wondered what the mutual ggg grandfather of many of you, and of

myself, would think and say, if he could know that the descendents of the

children he nursed under one cabin roof had somehow rediscovered one

another, thousands of miles apart, and over one hundred years later, and

yet....family again...conversing on a regular basis, caring for one another

again, knowing the lives of one another as surely as he conversed with the

neighbor down the road or the cousin next door... I have often wondered if

the gg grandmother that was my own and the gg grandmother that was yours,

and whom the census records tell us were neighbors...could know that today

we too are neighbors. We are a thousand miles apart perhaps, and we don't

gather talk quietly together over a quilt in progress, we don't slip in one

another's back door to help nurse the sick, we don't climb a hill together

to bury the dead in a grave we dug together...but we are neighborly and

caring of one another on a daily basis just the same. What would they

think? Would they not sit in wonder at it? At the sheer wonder of KNOWING

that somehow their roots had lived on, and not just survived, but found each

other once again? Would they not wonder at the continuation of something

they themselves, a hundred years in a grave, had begun? These people, these

people we search out so desperately are the VERY the bonding between people

generations later who descend from mutual ancestors and neighbors...and we

know each others dreams and heartbreaks as surely as my gg grandmother knew

those of yours.

A hundred years... a long time...and yet not so long...the changes in this

century make it a tremendously long time in terms of what timelines of

history tell us have occurred in each...and we can see that this century has

obviously been equal to many previous ones in terms of changes. A hundred

years...and yet the VERY changes that make it such a tremendously long

time...also have ironically made it a SHORTER time. We have somehow stepped

into a gap in time and stitched it together...

When else in history has the information and communication ever been

available that the descendents of roots planted one hundred years before,

two hundred years before...can find each other again? Can care for one

another again? Can BE family and neighbors again?? Much as we long for the

times that have past, much as we rue the changes...WE WE have been blessed,

have been given a gift that no other generation before us in the history of

the world has had the opportunity of, that no other generation before us

could dream of. WE WE alone can find the family that has been through the

eons of time lost to one another after a hundred years or so...

Why? And does not this put upon us an element of responsibility? Does this

not bring forth the startling realization that we TRULY are family, that it

is entirely credible that we can be family to anyone on earth? Yes, we knew

that...but now we KNOW that.

If the last hundred years forced the realization that the grandparents who

lived long ago are the very bond for the relationships we are discovering

now....may another hundred years force the realization that WE were the bond

and the beginning of the realization that the world is a family, in

entirety, and there is no room left for anything but peace among us. Let us

be the beginning of a new bond... and a hundred years from now let it be

known where it began.

But let us also remember that we are the first generation of our

knowledgeable past ones to know a new millenium...and it will be yet another

1000 years before yet another of our own know a millenium...pray there will

be one, what we do with the next hundred years may well be the foundation

for whether that ever happens.

just a thought,

jan

------------------------------

End of knoxcotn-digest V1 #40

*****************************