Johnny Eugene Lemons 1935-2001

When you are a little girl, they sometimes tell you that you will never find anyone to compare to your daddy, and I believe that.  However, I also believe the same about my beloved Papa.  There is not a day goes by that i do not miss him or think about him.  I said in a previous post that I was going to start writing posts on ancestors as I go along so I figured I would start with Papa.  He was loved by so many and done so much good for everyone.  He was a 2nd generation forestry for the state of TN.  His father was also forestry, and now my daddy makes the 3rd generation.  Papa was with Forestry for 35 and 1/2 yrs before he retired in 1995.  He was a lifetime member of the Rhea County Rescue Squad and was the first Captain of the Grandview Fire Dept.  I was so proud of my grandfather, i believe that he lived everyday of his life to help someone else in need.  He would go out west to CA, OR, etc to fight wildfires and he always came back with a beard.  Him and my mawsie had a huge bedroom in their house when we were little he wanted us in there with them to keep us safe so he had their ca queen size bed on one end of the bedroom and our full size bed on the other.  He always looked after us.  He also used to always give me orange juice with ice when i was sick.  We grew up just 3 houses down the street from theirs we could walk there. When he died I felt the world had been dropped out from under me. He had been sick for a long time with Parkinsons's.
At his funeral , Rev. Randall Dye officiated and good gosh, poor Randall, he was grieving also but every word he spoke of my grandfather was true. We couldnt of asked for a better friend of the family to do papas service.  randall done great.  I will always remember my Papa as living each day to help
someone else.

papa passed the day before my mothers birthday and was buried on mawsie and papa's anniversary. The good thing is now there anniversary has another good thing about it.  My daughter Katie was born on jan 22., on their anniversary. they would of been married 55 years on the day she was born.  also another side note, if you know me or the family you know my grandfather commited suicide due to his illness, the Parkinson's had took over and he had dementia and was causing all kinds of side effects.  The only reason I told this is because during this time, the family had too many friends to list to come forward and basically help do anything.  My best friend Angel, came as soon as she heard, and stayed with me for a week.  Almost got fired for being with me and she didn't care this is how much she cared about me and my family.  We call her the adopted daughter just like her family thinks of me.   This is how loved my grandfather was.

I could write pages and pages on the stuff that he has done.  One other thing sticks out.I was a dispatcher for 12 years and one of the police officers that had been around a long time, told me that papa was his guardian angel that he went with him to calls here on the mountain, that if dispatch couldn't get him on the radio that he knew papa would be there in a min to check on him... Now I am grateful because he is my guardian angel.

sorry for not writing

I have not wrote in a while. I have had a lot going on.  I have spent time today reading other people's genealogy blogs.  I think I am going to start doing ancestor profiles.  When I get to the point of learning so much about which ever ancestor I plan on writing all that I know about that ancestor. I figure that would be a good way of getting the info out there.  Plus on a side note, the first day of classes at Roane State is coming up so I have to get ready for that also. I can't wait to start taking my classes.

Talking with Mom and Ancestry.com member trees

Well yesterday was the start of the 127 sale here in TN, so me and the babies have been staying with mom at her house while my husband has been helping my family at the foot of the hill at the yard sale.  While there today we logged onto Ancestry.com with the netbook and worked on her side of the family.  Her line includes the surnames:  Maddle/Madewell, Smith, Rittenberry, Mccloud, and so on.  She started researching her side of the family a couple of years ago and helped me get a lot of the name straight and who was whose child and all of that.  So she really helped me alot.  Thank you, Mom.

I want to know if anyone else gets sidetracked by the ancestry.com member trees?   I have gotten sidetracked so many, many times.  I take really good notes and record the sources of where i got info from when i find something that i knows belongs in the tree.  But, here lately, i have been adding people off of these member trees and its screwing me all up.. All i can say is thank goodness for my notes or I would have to start all over again.   I have to remember to take these trees as just a sampling of what might be right but not to take it as gospel for being right.  

New finds

Well i was in my mom n dads basement with some other family and came across some new finds. I found report cards from my papas cousin,  a graduation certificate thats from a school thats not even there anymore and phone books for rhea county from the 50s and 60s.

Media on FTM2012

Well I went to the cemetery and took pics of headstones, and last night i added some to the people on Family Tree Maker 2012.  When I went to do the sync to get the pictures on ancestry.com all that is showing up now is some random picture from ancestry.  I dont know what has happened.  I have tried 3 times to get them on there.  Ah, the frustration!!!   i will post a pic of what ancestry.com has put up there instead of the tombstone picture.  If anyone out there has any idea how to fix this please comment and let me know.  I dont know what else to try.  The first image is what ancestry put for the tombstone picture.

Mount Sulpher Cemetery

I wanted to get away from everything today and be by myself so I grabbed my digital camera and off I went to the cemetery.  The cemetery where alot of my relatives are buried is literally like 2 minutes from my house.   I think that I took pictures of every headstone and marker there.  I just walked up and down the rows.  Found a lot of family that I didn't realize was there and some of course that I always knew were there.  Going to the cemetery always gives me peace, its a final resting place that ought to be tended to and preserved.

Plan Your Way to Research Success Webinar

Today i watched my first ever webinar on genealogy.  My first impression was that I should of been watching these things a long time ago.  They are a great learning tool.  I watched Plan Your Way to Research Success on the Legacy Family Tree website. Marian Pierre-Louis is who done it and it was GREAT!!!  I learned so much on research logs.  With my massive tendency to wander from branch to branch of the tree, this webinar was just what I needed to watch today.  She was very informative on telling us how to create and maintain a research log or where to get ones that were already made.  I so need to start doing this and recording what I have already searched so that I won't go back and re-search the same things over and over again.  I believe I will make my own with each new ancestor.  She had great ideas, and I plan to go by a lot of them...
The webinar is free til Jul 30th.  I highly recommend watching it.

just click on the title of her webinar..

Plan Your Way to Research

overwhelmed!!

Do you ever feel overwhelmed?  Theres so much I want to do with all of this family history, but sometimes i just go in so many directions, i cant pin it down.  Instead of concentrating on one line or even one family at a time, i go back and forth through out people.  I have to get it in my mind to do one family , one line at a time, because if I dont i figure i will drive myself crazy and probably miss something trying to do everything at once.  I just want to know it all.  What i should really be doing is finding all i can about one person and then moving on to the next....

Pictures and Such

I am going to slowly start adding some family pictures to the blog so that my other family will be able to see them.  I have so many, papa's cousins left alot of old pictures.  Sadly some do not have names on them but some of them do so that makes it a little easier.  Plus mawsie and papa always had alot of pictures too.  I went thru my own not long ago and put names on the back of them.

The Start of the Morning and Robert E. Lee

This morning, woke up around 8am by the babies.  I have a 1 yr old little boy and almost 3 yr old little girl. Got them started with their juice, cheerios, and ever present spongebob for her and dinosaur train for him. lol
Managed to get on the internet and enter some sweeps (sorry addicted to entering sweeps just like genealogy). Now I have finally made my way to Ancestry.com.  Yesterday, I posted surnames on facebook and got alot of feedback.  A cousin and I discussed possible relation to Robert E. Lee.  This fascinates me.  I have always loved reading and watching everything I could on the Civil War. I love the whole time period.  We are going to see what we can find to see if this relationship might be right or not.  I am hoping that we will be able to find documentation to prove it.

Genealogy Links

Well for the most part today, I have been on Facebook connecting with people with interest or related with some of the surnames that I am researching.  I have also been joining several helpful facebook groups and saving helpful webpages as bookmarks.  I have had major problems in the past with looking at member trees on ancestry and making major mistakes on my own tree.  Now I have a thing to where if I do not have a source then it does not go on there.  Of course, this is a major genealogy thing anyway.  I just want to do this the right way, and make sure that every name I add has sources.  I would rather have 20 people in my tree and it be right then have 2,000 and it all be wrong.

Flip-Pal Scanner

I have been seeing this scanner mentioned on facebook pages of genealogy groups I belong to and on other peoples blogs and I decided to try one.  I have to say as soon as I got it I scanned probably 200 newspapers clippings in a very short time.  I am amazed at this scanner.  I am so happy I decided to buy one they are fantastic and I highly reccomend getting one if you are researching your family history or if you have alot of photographs that you are going to scan they are wonderful!!!

ancestry.com

Well I am now working on the family tree on ancestry.com and I am amazed at how much stuff that does not come up under the shakey-leaves hints.  For example, i was looking at the hints for my maternal grandfather Frank Edward Maddle Sr. and when I got done with the hints I hit the search records button and came up with the city directory listings, his marriage to my grandmother Evie Lois, and the 1940 census.  Also came up with a bunch of my mothers siblings' marriage records.  I have to say if have never thought of looking into your ancestry, you ought to try it once and see what all comes up.  I do believe that Ancestry.com still offers the 7 day or 14 day trial that you can cancel and its free as long as you cancel before the free trial is up.

my first post!!!

Johnny Eugene and Imogene Cunningham Lemons

Above is a picture of my paternal grandparents.  I figured I would add their picture to my first post.  I am starting to research my family history.  I am going to start with my father's line the Lemons family.  So far i have met several family members through ancestry.com and facebook that I didn't even know I had.  I so look forward to finding more family members out there that I didn't know about.