Wordless Wednesday - W. T. Spurlock and Lewis Butler

Digital image. Original photograph held by Cheryl Chaney Beaver, [ADDRESS
WITHHELD FOR PRIVACY], Lone Grove, Oklahoma, 2011.

From Mamie Olive (Martindale) Spurlock's Scrapbook,

her oldest son,

William Taft Spurlock (1908-1974)

with his stepson Lewis Butler (1937-2012)

c1942

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – A 100 Word Genealogy Challenge

Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings has come up with another great challenge:

1. This SNGF is based on the 100 Word Challenge (http://100wc.net/) that school children are participating in around the world.  They are given a word or phrase to write a story about in one hundred words.
2. Write a short 100 word story using the phrase ",,,the most interesting ancestor I have..." in 100 words.  [Hint:  If you write it in a word processor, you can use Tools > Word Count (or similar) to count words]
3. Share the story with all of us by writing your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Google Plus Stream or Facebook Status or Note.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

For this exercise, I am going to choose Rhoda (Cary) Franklin as my most interesting ancestor. One of my maternal 2nd great-grandmothers, she was the daughter of Ephraim and Matilda (Gandy) Cary. She was born probably 9 January 1833 in Union County, Ohio. At the age of 16, she married Joseph Franklin. Rhoda and Joseph had five children who lived to adulthood. Rhoda was institutionalized in 1870 for what was described as “melancholia from the death of a child.” She was released two years later. I have never been able to find a death date or burial location for her.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Wordless Wednesday - Abie

Digital image. Original photograph held by Cheryl Chaney Beaver, [ADDRESS
WITHHELD FOR PRIVACY], Lone Grove, Oklahoma, 2011.

From Mamie Olive (Martindale) Spurlock's Scrapbook:

her middle son, my uncle,

Arthur Bryant Spurlock (1911-1951)

c1940

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Rivers of my Ohio Ancestors

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has presented a map-based challenge for this week's edition of Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. The mission this week is to: 

1)  I posted The"Rivers of America" Map yesterday, and demonstrated how to find the downstream course of a river in the United States, or the upstream watershed area of a river.  Please refer to that blog post. 2)  This week, your Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission is to make a map using the National Atlas map (at http://nationalatlas.gov/streamer/Streamer/streamer.html) showing the downstream course of a river that one of your ancestors may have traveled on.  What does it tell you?  What did you learn?  Did they live at other places on that river, or downstream of that river?
 3)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own (please show us the map you created - use an image snipping tool or take a screen shot), or make a comment here on this post, or write a Facebook status or a Google+ stream post. 

Some of my maternal ancestors—the Gandy, Cary, Franklin, and Snider families—settled along Bokes Creek in Union County, Ohio. Here is the map of the downstream trace:

I was a little surprised to learn the outlet for Bokes Creek is the Gulf of Mexico.

The site allows you to generate a stream trace detail report with lots of interesting information about where the trace travels along its route. Here is some of that data for Bokes Creek:

The Snider family migrated from Ohio to Kansas in the late 1800s. It is possible that they traveled the Ohio River on their journey west.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Wordless Wednesday - Maude Alberti (Martindale) Thompson and Children

Digital image. Original photograph held by Cheryl Beaver Chaney, [ADDRESS
WITHHELD FOR PRIVACY], Lone Grove, Oklahoma, 2011.

From Mamie Olive (Martindale) Spurlock's Scrapbook,

her older sister and her children,

Maude Alberti (Martindale) Thompson, Walter Ivan,

Edwin Albert, Verna Mildred, and Maymie Kathleen

circa 1910

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Amanuensis Monday - 1880 Deed - M.D.L. Spurlock to S.V. Harrell - Claiborne Parish, Louisiana

On his TransylvanianDutch blog, John Newmark defines an amanuensis as “a person employed to write out what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.” For more information about this daily blogging prompt, see John’s post Amanuensis – Why?.

I have amassed quite a collection of scans of handwritten documents related to my ancestors—primarily marriage records, deeds, and wills. As I have been transcribing these documents, it occurred to me that most of these documents were not actually written by my ancestors, but rather dictated to someone else, and then transcribed by a clerk into official records.

M.D.L. (Marcus D. Lafayette) Spurlock was the oldest son of Ransom and Ellender (Vickers) Spurlock to survive the Civil War. From the records  it appears he was a party to numerous land transactions in the years following the war. In this deed, he sells 80 acres to Miss S. V. Harrell. There were several Harrell families in the 1880 census in Bienville and Claiborne parishes, but I have not been able to identify this particular Harrell woman.

Here is my transcription as well as an image of the deed as it appears in the Claiborne Parish record books:

“M. D. Spurlock

DEED TO

S. V. Harrell

Filed Nov. 23/80

State of Louisiana     )

                                    (

Parish of Claiborne   )

August 12, 1880. Know all men by these presents that I, M.D.L. Spurlock, of the parish and state aforesaid in and for consideration of the sum of three hundred dollars have this the 12 day of August bargained, sold, transfered and delivered and do by these presents bargain, sell, transfer and deliver to Miss S. V. Harrell a certain piece of land known and described as, to wit:

The North half of the North East quarter of Section 25 of Township 19 North of Range 6 West, containing 80 acres more or less

The said S. V. Harrell to have and to hold the same forever.

Attest signed:                                                             Signed:

            John Vanhooser                                                        M. D. L. Spurlock

            W. M. Lugner

State of Louisiana     )

Parish of Claiborne   }

Before me, the undersigned authority came and appeared John VanHooser who on oath deposes that the maker of this deed signed the same on the day it bears date for the purposes there stated.

                                                                                    Signed:           John VanHooser

Sworn to and subscribed before me Nov. 23, 1880.                      J. R. Ramsey, Dy.Clk.D.C.

A true record Nov. 23, 1880                                                             J. R. Ramsey, Dy.Clk.D.C.”

Source: Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, Conveyance Records, M: 125, M.D.L. Spurlock to S. V. Harrell, 

23 Nov 1880; FHL microfilm 265,983.  

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – The Date My Father Was Born

Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings has issued the following  mission for this week:

1)  What day of the week was your Father born? Tell us how you found out.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your Father's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

3)  What famous people have been born on your Father's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

4)  Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

My father, Jasper Jackson Spurlock, Jr., was born on 12 March 1912 in Jacksonville, Cherokee County, Texas.

He was born on a Tuesday. To find out, I used the Genealogy & History Research Assistant app that I have on my phone.

To answer the next question, I googled “March 12 in history” and selected the second result which took me to HistoryOrb.com. The site listed 182 historical events. After perusing the list, I selected the following:

·         1959 – The U.S. Congress approves Hawaii statehood
·         1894 – In Vicksburg, Mississippi, Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time
·         1860 – Congress accepts preemption bill – free land in the West for colonists
·         1755 – First steam engine in America installed to pump water from a mine
·         1664 – First naturalization act in American colonies

The same site listed 284 famous birthdays on March 12 including the following individuals who were born in the same year as  my father:

·         1912 - James McKay, lord provost of Edinburgh
·         1912 - Kylie Tennant, novelist (Battlers, Lost Haven)
·         1912 - Paul Weston, Springfield Mass, orchestra leader (Jim Nabors Hour)
·         1912 - Irving Layton, Canadian poet (d. 2006)

To round out the list of birthdays, I would include the Girl Scouts who were founded on March 12, 1912. Because they shared the same “birthday,” Daddy always thought he should be named an honorary Girl Scout!

[Source: “This Day in History for 12^th March,” HistoryOrb.com (http://www.historyorb.com/day/march/12 : accessed 13 July 2013)]

© 2013 Denise Spurlock