My progress with creating John Washington Womble’s neighborhood has been slow of late. This weekend I took a break from visiting my local family history center to research so that I could spend more time on this project.
Earlier in the week I came up with the idea of creating a
timeline of events that happened in the Civil District where John Washington
Womble lived. My idea was that perhaps
the various land sales would develop into a better grasp of where the various
plats were supposed to be.
A few months ago, I’d listened to a webinar about
neighborhood recreation. The lecturer mentioned that one will never completely
be able to locate every single tract of land and be able to place it with 100% accuracy
in a particular area. This bit of
information was a wonderful boost and needed realism for me.
In creating my timeline I learned a few things, Ellen Womble
Bowling and her husband sold their land within a few of her father, John
Washington Womble. Also Womble’s
neighbor, Samuel Faught sold his land the exact same day. Of further interest, John J Womble, nephew to
John Washington bought a presumed neighboring tract two years later. I had always thought mistakenly that at least
for a short time the men had been neighbors.
But not so, according to my timeline.
Unfortunately, listing out the various land transactions
became less numerous or easy for me. I’d
platted a number of tracts in DeedMapper and began trying to arrange them in a
logical manner according to their Census enumeration. This is slow work because the trying to
follow the plats and their placement in the Census doesn’t always seem to
follow a logical sequence.
Perhaps something to keep in mind is that the enumerator was
likely on horseback and likely wasn’t walking.
The Census for the 12th Civil District of Hardeman County
isn’t too helpful because it only provides the month on some of the pages as an
indication as to when the enumeration was done.
So I have no idea if it took the enumerator the entire month to complete
where he spent a couple of hours each day traveling around in that Civil
District, or if he was able to complete his task within a day.
From prior research I know that there is a bridge that goes
across the Hatchie
River that was owned by a
man named Simpson. A road known back in
that time as the Bolivar Simpson road likely ran from the Hatchie River
to Bolivar. My thought is that likely
the enumerator may have traveled along that road and then made his way in a
circuitous route off the road and onto whatever lanes, paths, or pastures may
have existed to reach the various people living in that Civil District.
