Tag: Walthour
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Found in the Records: The Murder of Cato
The Murder of Cato Colonel’s Island, Liberty County, 1846 There are some days in my research when I dedicate an entire afternoon to a single FamilySearch collection for one county, hoping that by moving page by page, front to back, something overlooked will finally emerge. Names like “Baker” or “Thomas” can become almost impossible to Read more
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Chasing Shapeshifters: John W. Magill
Fragments of a Family Story About a year ago, I began creating folders for individual family members, gathering whatever evidence surfaced as my research intensified. What started in 2023 as a vague, single folder—with a Word document summarizing what I thought was my family tree—quickly unraveled. That document went through multiple rewrites, additions, and hard Read more
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What the Record Keeps: Following Eliza Huguenin Thomas Magill
The Names That Return In my previous post on “Cousin Rosa,” I introduced her as the daughter of Eliza Huguenin Thomas and John W. Magill. As I have noted in earlier writings, tracing female ancestors often requires the application of different guideposts than those typically employed for men. It is precisely this challenge that made Read more
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The Life and Shadows of Mary Jane Thomas Gaden: A Story Waiting to Be Told
If I were a fiction writer, I’d already have a novel on my hands. This story has all the elements: a strong protagonist, mystery, wealth, betrayal, spiritualism, social reform, crime, and ruin. But it’s not fiction—it’s the real-life story of my 2nd great-aunt, Mary Jane Thomas Gaden. And I’m piecing it together, fragment by fragment, Read more
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Follow the Women
Where I started over two years ago in genealogy research and where I am now are two very different places. My skill set for this work has steadily progressed. Still, I catch myself in frustration when I try to locate evidence of my female ancestors. When I spent a month in August of 2024 in Read more
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Land
Part of learning about my family history has focused on learning the counties and towns/cities where past generations lived. My grandmother told me the earliest stories of places, but I couldn’t get a grasp beyond Savannah,GA and Hilton Head, SC: the two locations I remember the most when visiting my grandmother. On trips to Savannah, Read more