Ideas for learning more about Rhoda Caroline Richardson

Rhoda Caroline Richardson?

Earlier I blogged about obtaining Rhoda Caroline Richardson Womble’s death certificate in an effort to find out the names of her parents.  While getting the document was worth the money, I don’t feel that it answered my question due to misinformation from the informant.  So I’m back to the drawing board with this project!

I haven’t spent a lot of time researching the women in the line I’m working on primarily because it hasn’t been that difficult until now.  Normally, I’ve at least been able to find small scraps of information that have satisfied my curiosity such as,  the names of their parents and what state they were born in.

Some books I read on getting information about ones female ancestors suggested searching through probate records for someone with the same last name mentioning the female in question in a will.  I searched through some digital images of wills online at FamilySearch.org and didn’t find anything.  This was a bit discouraging, so I decided to think about other avenues for learning more about Rhoda. 

I don’t have much to go on.  The family story if you can call it that, says that she was born in Indiana and then moved to Tennessee as a girl.  Most of the documents I’ve found about her support that she was born in Indiana and since she got married in Tennessee, she must have moved there at some point after her birth. 

Her marriage occurred in Nashville, Tennessee just after the Civil War, and my guess has always been that she may have been living there during the war and that’s where she met her husband, John Washington Womble.  I looked at census records for 1860 for a female with a similar name to Rhoda’s, who was born in Indiana.  I found a couple of young women who were named either R C or Caroline, but I was unable to figure out if one of them was who I was looking for.

I looked through the Nashville City Directory trying to find other people with the same last name, but at this point was unable to find a way to tie them to Rhoda.

My strategy is to try to pursue church records in Nashville because they might give me more information about her life and lead me to members of her family or the identity of her parents.  Rhoda and John W Womble were married by a Justice of the Peace, so I doubt that this will lead me to a church.  The person who co-signed the marriage bond with John W Womble was name H F Mijers and I couldn't figure how they could be connected to Rhoda.  I did find a H F Myers listed in the 1866 Nashville City Directory.  He had a clothing store or tailoring business.  John W Womble was a tailor, so he could've worked there, but does that mean that his employer would have co-signed a marriage bond.  That seems unlikely to me.

I came up with the idea to get a listing of churches in Nashville during the time when Rhoda lived there.  Not only did she perhaps live there during the Civil War, but also later on from about the mid-1880’s until she died in 1904.  Then the plan is to find a churches near where Rhoda lived and try to find out what records exist that could help me in my search.

The other idea I had was to obtain marriage certificates for her children to see if I could determine the name or denomination of church where the wedding took place.  I examined Albert’s (Rhoda’s son) marriage documents and wasn’t able to learn the denomination of the person who married them.  I know from the marriage announcement for Albert and his bride that they were married in a relatives home (the bride’s maternal grandfather).  The person who married them is listed as E T Brantly V D M on the marriage certificate.  I looked up in a dictionary online as to the meaning of the acronym V D M and learned that it’s Latin for Verbi Dei Minister, which means Preacher of God's Word.  I still have no idea as to what denomination of Minister would use this acronym.

My next course of action is to pursue obtaining Rhoda’s daughter, Maude B Womble’s marriage certificate.  Perhaps the infamous Maude B. Cudworth will actually be able to help me with my research instead of being a detriment.

Embroidery Project Update

Earlier this year I posted how my current embroidery project was coming along.  I was able to stick with working on it regularly until about the beginning of April when I began preparations for attending Samford and cross-stitch took a backseat in my life.

When I got back from Samford, I thought that I would take it up again, but about a month later the unpredictability of life reared its head and I couldn’t do much with it until nearly two months later.  Since returning to this project I’ve been able to devote the better part of my weekends to stitching on it and have even at times kept a journal of the amount of time spent cross-stitching on it. 

The project is on of my fairly short list of 2012 New Year’s resolutions and hopefully if I’m able to complete a resolution this year, this will be the one.  Earlier this year, I had been hoping to complete the picture this summer and enter it into the county fair, but after weathering a bit of chaos in my life, I see that I was deluding myself.

I very pleased with how the stitching coming along.  The magnifier is working out very well.  However, when I moved it from the top scroll bar to one of the sidebars, I noticed that it had discolored the fabric some.  Thankfully, the dis-colorization is only on the wrong side of the fabric so it’s not visible from the front. 

Stitching progress since 14 October 2012

On a previous project years ago, I did experience the fabric getting stained from a clamp or something that held the scroll frame in place.  The stains did come out when I applied bleach to the affected area with a cotton swab.  Just call me the cross-stitching Heloise!  Thankfully, that hasn’t happened to me with this project and it’s interesting that when things seem to go wrong with projects, it’s the ones that you plan to give to other people.

I’m still having issues with flecks of the linen coming off onto the stitched areas.  I’m still thinking this is just a ‘feature’ or bug as they say in the computer world when working with linen.

The project does have some DMC brand metallic floss in it.  This is always a challenge to stitch with.  Thankfully, there are only fairly small amounts of this being used in the picture, but the funny thing is the more that I study the pattern, the more areas that I can point out as being stitched with the dreaded metallic floss.  As I was working with it today, I considered stitching the other areas that require the metallic floss just so that I could get it over with.  Sort of how one might approach walking across hot coals, their annual prostate exam, mammogram, or Pap test.

I will say that the DMC brand metallic floss isn’t completely awful to work with at least in comparison to others.  The metallic flosses or filaments that gave me the most grief were the ones that came with kits, so I could never be sure where the manufacturer got their stuff from.  I think the worst were in kits from Bucilla and Leisure Arts.  Both companies have beautiful patterns and wonderful kits, but they need better quality control of the metallic flosses and filaments that are included in them.  In the past, my first exposure to metallic floss was when working a project that required a Kreinik brand metallic floss.  This wasn’t horrible to work with, but did require a lot of patience and attention to manipulating the floss so that it laid flat on the fabric. 

 The only issue I have so far in working with the DMC metallic floss was that when stitching with a blended needle, meaning two different colors of floss on one needle.  I found that unless I worked the stitches one at a time instead of my usual method of working a row of one bar of the X for a row and then going back over this row to stitch the top bar of the X that the second (non-metallic) color of floss would loop it’s way up from the backside of the fabric.  I hadn’t experienced this with the Kreinik brand floss or filament.  The plus side of the DMC metallic floss is that I didn’t have issues with the metallic portion separating from the white stabilizing thread, but then the areas I was stitching were very small rows.  Perhaps, if I were stitching large areas this would happen.