Facebook Groups and Drama

I am in several Facebook groups about genealogy.   I won't mention all of the names but the drama is there especially on one of them.   People can comment or ask a question wanting help or try to start a discussion and it will move greatly down hill with sometimes mean, hateful, snide remarks.   Most of the time it has been dealing with proof , sources and professional versus amateur genealogy.   I will say I am not professional genealogist I still consider myself completely new to the field but come on is there really a reason to be this hateful and sometimes mean to people just for asking for help.
There was one post in particular that comes to mind.   I think it was someone stating there were related to so and so and the person posting didn't put on their post of how they reached that conclusion or the sources the information came from.  One person stated that without sources and proof its not true. Another posted that basically unless you have a lot of money to spend then don't even start researching your family tree.
Here is my take on it.   I started genealogy to learn more about the great family that I came from.  I am not rich and I know that  I need to get out and do field research at courthouses and libraries but really is there something wrong with getting the information off the internet now and doing field research later.   And no I am not rich and no I do not have a lot of money but I will continue this research and do it the best that I can.
Regarding sources, I know that you need to source your tree for various reasons.  One you know that you are on the right path, you know the information is correct and where you got the info, and others later on will be able to find the exact same information on your ancestors.   Is my tree completely sourced right now, No it's not. Am I working on that yes I am.   Should I be made to feel less because I am new to this, or I am not a professional or I might not know as much as others No I should not.
We have to remember we are all human, No matter who you are you are not perfect!!!!!!!!!!!   Sooner or later you are going to make a mistake or need to ask a question and people should not make you feel awful for asking that question  or making that mistake.

Frank Edward and Evie Lois (Rittenberry) Maddle

I have to say, when I think of my mother's parents, Frank Edward (1930-2004) and Evie Lois Rittenberry (1931-1997) Maddle, so many memories pop up.  My grandparents had 13 children - 8 boys  and 5 girls.   My grandparents had a hard life growing up.  I am lucky enough to have about  5 pages wrote by my granny detailing some of her early life.  In having this I know so much about my grandmother growing up that she never had the chance to tell me and I have so much respect for her and my grandfather.   Did they have a lot when it came to possessions, probably not but I can garauntee you that they were very rich in deed in love for each other and for their children.   My Papa Frank served in the Army and had numerous jobs one of which was a coal miner.  A lot of times they traveled back and forth between OH and TN for work.  He done what he could to provide for the family.
My grandmother lost her father John Monroe Rittenberry in 1936.  She was 5 years old.  He passed away from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.   My great grandmother later remarried but I couldn't imagine losing my daddy at that age.   They also had a sister that passed away at the age of 2.   
Both my grandparents suffered losses and grief and hardships.   But through it all, they had each other and they had their children and family.   I am very proud that I am the grand daughter of such wonderful and loving grandparents and I miss them each day.

Memories

Isn't it funny how when you are working on family history, especially on the generations of the family that you knew personally, how it brings back so many memories.  I was organizing notes this morning on mom's side of the family.   She has 12 brothers and sisters so lots of aunts and uncles and cousins.    As I was writing down what I remember and what I know of each one so many memories came back.   Unfortunately, for us and mom's side my aunt Miranda passed in 2010, she was the first of the siblings to pass away and she was always my favorite.   I spent so many summers with her and my uncle Kenny.   I have to say because I had heard them both say it so many times, they thought of me like their daughter not only their niece and I loved them both so much and miss them greatly.   My summers thru some of elementary school and high school were spent with them.   We would go and spend a lot of times with my grandparents and at my aunt Sheva's and at my uncles house.   Oh the times we had.   
I also spent a lot of time at my Aunt Faye's house and at my aunt Sheva's.   I have so many memories of weekends spent in middle and west TN with my aunts and uncles and cousins.   When we would go to my aunt Faye's or any of my other aunt's houses most of the time the rest of the family would gather there also.   I can now only wish I would of been interested in family history then because they would always tell stories and everything.   Unfortunately most of the time that is how it goes by the time we get interested in family research the ones that could of told us the best stories of our family such as our grandparents have already passed.  

Starting Over...

Starting Over..

Since I am going to start over, I figured this time I would concentrate on one family line at a time.  All of you know what I speak of when I say that as we search we come across so many things that leads us into so many different directions that makes it  hard to stay on track of that one line.   I will probably go off the track a couple of times , I can't say that I won't but i am going to  concentrate on my paternal surname Lemons.   My mother is actively researching her own maternal surnames Rittenberry,  Mccloud, Rittenberry and Crook , so I will cocentrate on my father's side.

I will start out with my grandfather Johnny E. Lemons.  I know when he was born, married, and when he passed. I know the locations and who his parents are.   With my grandmother Imogene Cunningham, I also know the same information.  Luckily growing up we lived basically right next door to my grandparents and I miss them every day, but that is another story.  We have always lived in a small community so people know us and they knew my grandparents.  That is the good thing about small towns and the small communities that some of us live in.   We have grown up with these people, and they have shared our joys and our sorrows and they are a great wealth of information if we just stop and talk to them every once in a while.

I was also lucky enough to have boxes of information from my father's line.  I have old pictures, newspapers clippings, and  obits that his cousins had clipped from newspapers.  I have a family Bible from the same cousins, along with books on the  county and on the community of which we live.    I have all of this stuff but yet none of it is labeled or put in the right places on the computer or transcribed and the info extracted.    I do have a lot of work cut out in front of me, but I have to say, I  look forward to every bit of it.

Things to Accomplish

I am sitting here reading genealogy blogs and thinking to myself when it comes to my own research what is it that I wish to accomplish?  I have made so many of the classic mistakes that one starts out doing when they start on their pursuit of  family history.   I was one of the folks that would click and add to my tree without paying attention to the details of the records in order to get my family tree done as quickly as possible.  I didn't pay attention to records or to insight and the thoughtful words of those that tried to help.

Thankfully I know better now and I know that there is so much more to researching and adding people to your family history than being on a website click, click, clicking away with no regard to what you are doing.  I want to know as much as possible  about each person that is in my family.  These are our ancestors, they faced wars, plagues, things that we can't imagine, or  maybe we could and that is why we want to try to find them.   I want to take each person that is in my family tree and find each and every thing that I can find out about them.

The great discoveries, the accomplishments, even the failures, whatever it is I want to know.   I have started my tree over and I have went thru my notes and I have gotten rid of anything that might no be right and that I had no proof for in order to start over right and in the correct way.   It's so easy to get exicted along the way and mess up but luckily I have a mother and father that shares my interest and pursuing this great feat and I have 3 or 4 more cousins that are actively researching their family trees also that share mine.  
I so enjoy reading everyone's blogs so please keep them coming, your discoveries and techniques are a great asset to anyone reading.

Wiki tree, family search trees and more

I have not wrote in quite a while.   Right now sick at home, is one reason that i am writing.    Anyway, the past couple of days I have looking into Wikitree and the now accessible family trees on familysearch.    I already had a tree on wikitree but hadn't really fooled with it til Saturday night.  Then today I started one on family search.   I think that both of these are great ideas.  I love the idea of being able to put the information out there so that others who might have the same ancestors can contact me.   I started genealogy to find out about my ancestors.  Whatever that I find I would willingly share with someone else.   Here is the thing, I found it on the internet on ancestry.com or on family search, if I found it someone else can too so this is why I have no problem putting it back out there.   Also if you are not going to share information with others why put a tree on the internet at all to begin with.

Also here lately there has been a lot of fussing about going on on some of the genealogy facebook pages.  I seen a couple of replies the other day that upset me greatly.  I still consider myself a newbie at researching my family.  We all make mistakes that is what makes us human, no matter what no one is perfect.  To down someone or to fuss at someone because they might not be at the same calibur that you think you are is disgraceful or to say you more or less have to be rich to research your family tree, is not right either.   I don't have the money to go to every courthouse in every county of the US that my family lived in, but I can get on the internet and try to find what I can there and maybe be able to visit a lot of these towns later on.

Who do you think you are is back

I am so happy to hear that TLC is bringing back Who Do You Think You Are.  I loved watching this show.
I would always watch and DVR the episodes and my husband would even watch them with me.   Probably one of my favorite episodes was the one with Sarah Jessica Parker.  

article on who do you think you are.

The list of who is going to be on it looks pretty good also.   I was just so very happy to hear that it was going to be coming back on.
Thank you TLC

Items that came from our ancestors...

I have been catching up on reading some blogs today.   I have a great interest in reading other people's blogs on their own personal family history researching quest.    I enjoy with them every little find and drop of new information that they might find.
I have had so many ideas today.   I have so many newspaper clippings, obits clipped from newspapers, letters, photos, recipes, etc that came from my ancestors.   These things need to be added to the family tree for others to enjoy.  I know that a lot of family history research is based upon records, but let us not forget that their is more than records that tie us to our ancestors.  It could be a quilt that you great great grandmother made, or a picture of a man in uniform that turned out to be a grandfather or uncle that fought maybe during the Civil War, or a recipe that is barely legible that belonged to one of your ancestors.
I have the certificate of graduation for one of my grandfather's cousins from a school that does not even exist anymore.  I have the funeral books, from the same ancestors parents  from the 1950's that are so different than what you may get today from the funeral home.   We need to preserve every piece of history that comes from our ancestors, no matter what it may be.

Immigrants and Brickwalls

I have read so many books on starting genealogy and researching your own family tree.    I have went several generations back on each line however, I am nowhere close to discovering an ancestor that came by boat from another country to this country.   I am excited to find one though, because it will be interesting to find  where they come from and why they came to this country.
I do have a couple of brick walls.   I sometimes think that I am not exhausting the search to see what else I could possibly find on each ancestor.   I think some of my "brick walls" would not be brick walls, if I would just take the time to research in greater depths.
Here are some of my problems...
On the Lemons side of the family - my line goes from Theodore to Samuel to William (1799) to his father who was also William.  After that William can find his father.   Its a theory that the surname Lemons, might have undergone a change in spelling to get to Lemons, maybe from Lyming or Lemmons.   I'm not sure to how to go back any further which is another
reason why I decided to take the DNA test.
Another problem.   My maternal grandfather is Frank Edward Maddle (1930-2004).  His mother Dora L Mccloud was not married when she got pregnant with my grandfather.   All we know is that his last name was Whittaker he died in the 1960's in possibly the White, Sparta, or Putnam county areas.   His mother then married Noah Madewell and that is how my grandfather got his last name.  This again was another reason why I decided to take the DNA test.

I need to start organizing my information better and start utilizing the forms that people have provided for free on the internet.   I am going to reread some of my books on genealogy and see where I might be messing up and not doing something right in researching.   I need to start making use of things specifically like research plans and calanders.   I have always loved organizing paperwork and using forms.  I just need to apply that to my family history research.

Why I started Genealogy...

Many people often ask why do you work on your family history, or what got you started into your search into your family history?   For me, I don't think that it was any specific thing that happened.   Probably back in 2008 I was bored one day and I think I seen either a commercial or an ad on TV for Ancestry.com.  I was bored and sitting at home by myself and thought I will do the free trial ( I think it was for 2 weeks) and then I would cancel it if I didn't like it.   Needless to say, I never canceled it, and have renewed it several times over.   I remember first starting looking on ancestry.com and finding trees that others had done on my family and thinking WOW, this is the greatest thing.  Then the bug struck!!!   I had been doing it on and off til
sometime last year when I started doing it all of the time.  
I remember when I first started calling my family with each new thing no matter how significant I would be
on the phone with my mother or father one talking to them about it.   Luckily, I live in a small town, so even though all of my grandparents have already passed there is still quite a few around that remember them and those before them, plus I still have aunts and one uncles on my paternal grandmother's side that I have asked
quite a few questions to and that haved helped me a lot.  
My first child was born in 2010 and my second in 2011.  It was somewhere between those births that I
really wanted to know where I had come from in order to leave it for my children and their children.   I have
to admit its been hard and I have hit and am still hitting roadblocks but it is still completely worth it to me.

Getting rid of a little paper

Thanks to the following group on facebook
organizedgenealogist
I am trying to get my research that I have done so far a  little more organized.   I have been entering all the info that I have on paper into FTM2012 so that it can sync with the online tree.  I have hopes of getting it all in there once and for all so that I can pack up all the paper and store it somewhere else instead of having it laying around everywhere.
I have also been trying to sort through my matches on the ancestry.com DNA page.  I uploaded the raw DNA data to gedmatch.com and I have been trying to contact people from those matches also.   With the matches on ancestry.com I have been downloading the matches onto the computer so that I can look at them later.

Yarnell Hill Fire , AZ

June 30th of this year, will be a date that many in AZ will never forget.   On this day, 19 firefighters lost their lives at the Yarnell Hill wildfire.   This has affected the nation greatly.   One of the 19, his father lives in the same county I do.  With me, it affects me on a different level.  Did I know any of the 19, no I did not.  However, i connect with them in the way of knowing what it is like to see your father or grandfather go off to a fire, knowing what could happen to them.   My father, My grandfather, and My great-grandfather were all members of the Tn Div of Forestry.

My heart goes out to the families of these men.  I pray for them daily and hope that they find peace in their grief.  I watched the memorial service yesterday live on an abc station from Phoenix.  Here is the link, if anyone wants to watch it.
Yarnell Hill 19 Memorial Service
It is heart wrenching.  I cried the whole way through it.  It brought up so many memories for me, of my own grandfather's funeral and the support from the fire departments and rescue and community we had, and remembering Papa going to CA and other states to fight wild land fires.  I was so little when he would go and I don't think I knew the danger he was in but was so happy when he would come home.
Please take the time to remember of the families of these men in your prayers and to know that as these men and women go out to protect us and our homes from fire, that they might make the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives to save ours.

FTM 2012

I have to say for some reason I want my family tree to be perfect like I'm sure everyone else does.  The reality is its not going to be perfect.   There is always gonna be some little imperfection.   I have been actively working on getting the people in my tree that for a fact are supposed to be there and adding the sources for those people.  I am doing this so that I can share what I already have with some of my family.  I'm hoping if I share it with them then they will see how much work I have done with it and maybe some more of them will volunteer information for it.

Burn Out and Other Things

I think I have found a way to beat the genealogy slump that I am in.  I am still going to stay off of ancestry.com for a little while, but I have stuff that I have downloaded to my computer that I am going to work on.  I have all of my mother's files where she started working on her side of the family a while back plus I have quite a bit that I downloaded off of USGENWEB archives site.  I love to read and learn about the history of places along with family research in the middleof it this is the perfect opportunity for me to get out of this burn out I am in while still working on the family history a little.    I downloaded everything that they had on counties in TN and then looked through all of the stuff I had on other ancestors and downloaded the stuff from counties I needed from different states.  I had a lot of ancestors to go through and live in the states of TN, TX, and MO.  I highly suggest that people take a few minutes and take a look around the USGENWEB archives site.   I have copied and pasted the files to a thumb drive so that I can look through them.   
 I think that we are taking a trrip to the Chickamauga Battlefields tomorrow with the babies.   I love going to the battlefields and to the old plantations.   There is so much history in these places and I am so happy that they are historic and federal landmarks.   Some places I am sure are forgotten and they shouldn't be.  Adults and children both need to learn about these places and what they mean to us.   We need to learn about and study the history around us.   I want my children to know about these places and the events and sacrifices that took place there.  
Sorry i seem to be rambling, sometimes when I start writing or in this case start typing I can't really stop.  Which is good because i have not had that many posts on here lately which saddens me because I love to write. 
I still have some goals for this blog. Along with documenting my research on here I would still like to do a little profile on some of my ancestors.   I am going to look through the obits and pictures that I have tonight and start making some posts on them.   I have tried to get my blog address and my info out to the family so that they know that this site is here.  I am still learning so much about dong genealogy and about blogging about it.   I had started out doing the genealogy prompts on the geneablogger  website and I really need to go back to doing them they are great!!!   They make you think about your ancestors and when you start thinking about your ancestors, you may start going back over the info that you already have for that ancestor and might find something that you have missed.

Genealogy and all things that go along with it has become an addiction for me.  I love learning about my family history and about each and every ancestor along the way.   I love getting to know family members now that I never knew that I was related to in the first place and I have found several.  

In a Slump

I don't know what has been going on lately...   I guess you can say that I have been in a slump.   I guess that I am suffering from burn out from genealogy.   I am backing away a little to try and see if that helps.   Usually when this happens I either stop for a couple of days or work on someone else's tree or something.  I believe that we all go through it every once in a while.  
I have some correspondence to do with some other family members that i have gotten to know that I am going to still continue to do and then I'll go from there.   I am the type that when I get started on something like that I go full force on and that causes burn out quickly.

Haven't been around

I haven't wrote in several days...   We have been busy around here and around the area with babies, work, and family reunion..    We had I guess you could say our 2nd annual family reunion for my father's side of the family which includes the Lemons and Cunningham side of the family.    We had such a good time.   I had made posters with the family trees going as far back as I had done.   I also made posters that list the children of what would be my great great grandparents on the Cunningham and Lemons side.   A lot of the family showed up and my posters were a hit....   I was happy to share and listen to the stories of some of my ancestors.    We have to enjoy our time together and laugh, and be happy.   I love my family and I was very happy to see the day a success.   I have posted pictures of face book from that day and my cousin Monica also posted some pictures.   There at the end I spend a lot of time talking with a relative on the Lemons side and a relative from the Cunningham side.  It was great, both of these people gave me a lot of insight into the family tree.

I have been avidly working on the family tree trying to enter everything that I have notes on and that has sources of where I had got that information.   I am so obsessed when it comes to trying to get this information into the tree.   I swear its almost like an obsession working on the family tree.
I also took advantage of Vistaprint.com's offer on their business cards.   I wanted something to hand out at the reunion to the members of the family that I do not see very often but of course I ordered them too late and didn't get them back til today and the reunion was on Sunday.   But all is good, I have them to give out to other family members and I can give them at mom's family reunion.

Oklahoma

I have not wrote for a couple of days because like everyone else I have been glued to the Tv watching the footage from the tornado that hit Oklahoma.   The families that have lost children, loved ones, and entire residences and towns.   Such devastation and loss.   As a mother, this is a parent's worst fear realized that here your children are at school and suddenly disaster has struck.  Its a parents worst nightmare.  I will not even begin to think I know what these people are feeling in such a loss.
As a 911 dispatcher and having family that has been involved and still involved in volunteer fire departments and rescue squads I can only imagine what these people are feeling.   Our first instinct is to help others and that is what we do.   The 911 dispatchers working and answering the many 911 calls and listening to their officers and first responders on the radio were doing their job and doing it well, while not knowing if they had loved ones that might be hurt or worse or not knowing if they have a home to go back to.   Then you have the first responders that have been called out to help and sorting through the rubble looking for survivors and those that might not have survived.   
The only thing we can do is keep all of these people that have been affected by the tornado in our prayers and help as much as we can..

Sunday's Obituary ( A little late)

I had this post done yesterday, but I just didn't get around to post it.

Lucy Crook Smith Madewell was my Great Great Grandmother.    She was the daughter of Shady and Mary Lisa Whitehead Crook.   She married first William Loyd Smith, among their children was Sarah and she was my great grandmother.
Her second husband was Dee Madewell.

Motivation Monday

Oh goodness, Motivation Monday!!!   I need motivation badly.    I am slacking so badly in my research.   I am trying to get all of my information in one place, well two places really, in notebooks and binders and on the computer.    I keep trying to redo my trees instead of keeping to one so I have made one tree now and I am going to keep to it.   I was going to split it off into two trees but that is going to be way to hard right now for me to add stuff to out of my notebooks  I have about 15 to 20 spiral bound notebooks filled with notes that are not organized at all by surname or anything.   So as I go through the notebooks I add the information to family tree maker that is sourced or I have first hand knowledge of being correct.   

So that would be my motivation to get the notebooks out of the way and onto the computer because that is where it needs to be instead of lying around everything.  I need to be motivated to be organized and to have more research plans and know where I want to go with my research and what I want to find out.  I would love to know where my ancestors immigrated from but on some it stops before where they would have immigrated to the United States and I have no idea where to go and what to do to find out more information. 

I need to research more and read more into it and find out what I need to know.   I have many resources to look at and read. I have so many books on my Kindle and of course the internet at my disposal.  I just don't know where to begin.  I have started reading through the genealogy books on my Kindle again.  I got to keep in mind what I read in one this morning and that was One Ancestor, One Question, and One Record at a time.   I have so much I want to do with all of this information that it's hard to stay on track with just researching one at a time.

Matches and Family Trees

I spent my days off taking care of my babies , cleaning house and managing to look at some of the matches from the DNA test.   I was very excited by the matches.  I think i ended up with 93 pages which equaled out to like almost 5000 matches to go through. I know that somewhere in my family that these people are related some way and some how, its just doing the research and talking to the people to figure out where.    I mean the matches are from your own DNA results so that match must be there somewhere.    On some of them it also lists the surnames you have in common, and of course I do have a Smith surname as an ancestor so nearly all of my matches has the last name.    I found several that I knew for a fact was family also.    There is no way right now to search the results but you can leave notes on them and it will sort those that you have viewed, that has hints, or those that have been starrred.   So i have been just putting notes and clicking on the star when I have sent the person a message on ancestry or when I have spoken with them.   
I have also been working on my family tree.    I have split the family tree into maternal and paternal family trees to try to make it easier on myself.   I am going to leave the one up on ancestry.com for a while that has both because right now it has the DNA results linked to it.   I think I will stay more focused by splitting the trees instead of having one extra large tree.  I have spent a lot of time on family tree maker the past several days getting reaquainted with the forms also.