Platting Orientation Using the Census and a Timeline

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 12^th 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.

Research update for August 7, 2016 (yes, I realize it’s November)

After finishing with the Sarah Daniel petition file, I thought that I would take a short break from transcribing and start work on another file the next day.  However after looking through the various files in that day’s collection I thought I would just transcribe a bit of one of the files.  I picked one of the longer files, Easter Johnson because it was so long and went into it thinking that I would stop after a page or so of transcribing.

The strange thing was that I’d been preparing myself for what I thought would be a very “dry” file, filled with all sorts of boilerplate and annoying legalese.  However, it started out with Lazarus Johnston’s will, which goes on for a page and a half and brought up various events that happened after his death.  I became so caught up in what must have happened to his children and grandchildren as a result of those events that I kept transcribing for about seven more pages.

I worked a bit more on the Easter Johnson file tonight, 10 August 2016.  And will have to force myself to walk away from it a bit, because again I find myself getting swept up into the lives of these people that I’m transcribing.  My suspicion is that even though I’m feel that the petition case is fraught with drama that the reality is that it’s just the language being used and that it’s was just “business as usual” for these family members and the legal personages involved. 

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this case and if I make more interesting discoveries when I work my way through the other petition files.  I’m making a lot of use of the Black’s Law Dictionary that David gave me several years ago and am also learning a bit of the meanings of the legalese that I’m encountering in this particular petition.

John Washington Womble Neighborhood Project Part 5

Last Saturday, I again braved the intense heat and went to my local Family History Center to finish scanning the remaining petition files on the microfilm I ordered.  A couple of days ago I finished transcribing Mahala Grantham’s file and began on Sarah Daniel, widow of Ethelred Daniel’s file.  Today, I finished transcribing her file, afterwards took a break--watching some of the men’s gymnastics qualifying rounds--and will start on another petition file.

Since on the first go around with these files, I only made scans of about 5 files there isn’t much hanging over me for that day’s set of scans.  Last week, I’d been able to finish with my scanning and have about seven or so files to transcribe from that batch.

My plan once I finish transcribing the files is to then enter the metes and bounds descriptions into DeedMapper and hopefully place it logically in place with my other plats.  Then I’ll begin the process again by ordering another roll of microfilm of petitions from my list of missing land owners.

Evernote use

In a previous post I mentioned that I’d begun using Evernote and was trying out how it would work with my genealogy research.  I joined a couple of Evernote groups with the idea that I could troubleshoot any issues that might crop up.  I’ve experimented with using it in my research and have to say that there’s a steep learning curve at least for me in using it. 

Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I don’t have enough space on my tablet to install it and so am not able to test out how the sync feature works.  The online help I haven’t found to be helpful in answering my questions.  The tutorials only seem to spark ideas, and are lacking in step-by-step details of how a particular feature works.

I learned in using the program that if an image is copied and pasted into a new note that text can’t be added above or below as far as I can tell.  When I first installed Evernote I tried out the web clipping tool and was disappointed in how it worked.  Anything I searched online, either in the groups I’ve joined, Evernote’s help files, or tutorials never seemed to fully explain how it worked.  So I spent a lot of time flailing around clipping things.   The clippings, I would find later were a lousy image of what I’d clipped and this was disappointing. 

Eventually, I was able to use the clipping tool effectively, but it’s taken a lot of work and just playing around.  I get that help files with any software are the last things to get written.  But what doesn’t make sense to me is this program has been around seemingly forever, so long that there are people who have outgrown it and are moving on to something else, so why aren’t the tutorials better in explaining how features work?

As a work around to figuring out how features work with Evernote, I’ve taken to posing my questions to Google and abandoning Evernote’s help files, tutorials, and the groups I joined.  This is the only thing that’s provided answers even if they’re negative answers.

I’m still mystified as to why many people in the genealogy community find this program helpful.  Maybe they like the organizational capabilities and that I can understand, especially if you add tags to your notes.  One aspect that I like about it is that it’s helped me become more disciplined in citing my sources when I find them--instead of trying to write a citation six months or years down the road when I’ve forgotten where it was when I found such and such information or image and various other important particulars.  However that hasn’t caused me to use Evernote more.  But it’s helped me get into the habit of recording where I found X document and to note down a citation for it, which keeps me disciplined in sticking with my system that I’ve strived to maintain for my genealogical research.

Neighborhood Land Search Update

After viewing the tax records, I ordered the next deed books that I felt I needed to read through in order to find the remaining neighbors’ land.  Last Saturday, I went to my local Family History Center to view them.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of the neighbors I’m still looking for.  There were deeds of interest to me in them for the particular area, but just didn’t happen to be for my ancestor’s neighbors.

I looked through all of vol. R and began reading through vol. Q.  Since the microfilm scanner was being used by another patron, I put off scanning what documents I found and resolved to scan them at a later date.

Once I returned home, I decided since I was almost finished reading through vol. Q that I would order another roll of microfilm and that’s when I made an amazing discovery.  Apparently, FamilySearch.org has digitized some of the deed books I’m interested in reading through available online.  Still many of these records haven’t yet been digitized, but because many that I’m interested in reading through are, I won’t have to order them and can view them from the comfort of my living room.

Since vols. Q and R were available digitally, I was able to download the images I had noted down while at my local Family History Center.  Then I took up where I left off in vol. Q and downloaded what images pertained to the area I’m researching.

Portion of digitized deed book

The schedule for this coming Saturday is to look through the rest of vol. Q and download any that are pertinent to my research.  Then if I have time, enter them into DeedMapper.

I searched through more of FamilySearch’s land records holdings for Hardeman County, Tennessee and found that survey books, one roll of petition records, and an early roll of tax records have all been digitized so they’re available online.

What helped me was the fact that the deed index for Hardeman County, Tennessee has been digitized.  Yes, just because it’s an index I know that it’s not inclusive of every deed or document that was ever recorded in Hardeman County.  But still, it’s a place to start in locating the remaining neighbors’ deeds or review to see if I missed something.

After noticing this interesting bit, I looked through the 1860 census and noted on my neighbor list those who had been enumerated in Civil District 12.  This information should help me determine when someone may have purchased their land in my ancestor’s neighborhood.  The only obstacle with the land records in Hardeman County is that tax records and deeds during the years around the Civil War are not extant.  So there is the possibility that if some of John Washington Womble’s neighbors bought land during that time period that the document may not have survived the war.  There’s also the possibility that the deed could’ve been recorded much later.

The search continues…

Platting Through My Summer Vacation

I wrote back in April that I’d finished looking through Deed books W and X.  With summer vacation having ended here in the DC metro area since school started, I’m offering readers a look at how I spent my summer vacation.

In May, I purchased DeedMapper 4.2 from Direct Line Software.  I had no problems installing it and have found it to be helpful with what’s evolved into a mass platting project.  The software has made creating the plats so much faster and easier than using graph paper and a protractor and put an end to the Geometry class flashbacks/nightmares.

I’ve spent nearly every Saturday afternoon at my local Family History Center this summer reading through deed books page by page and scanning records that I believe to be relevant to my platting project.  My vacation was even spent there reading through a deed book.

At first with DeedMapper, I was putting the plats where I believed they were supposed to be on the map I’m using to place the tracts.  This became too problematic when other plats didn’t appear to jive with tracts that I felt surer of their probable location.  This was resolved by moving the questionably placed tracts out of the area until I had more information to suggest where they were located.

So the end all is that I concentrated on plats that mentioned creeks, rivers, and roads that I could readily identify on the map I’m using.  As I worked I felt a sense of accomplishment when in reading some deeds more closely that specifically mentioned relationships between the parties involved where an ancestor was parsing out pieces of their land to their grandchild or child.  Unfortunately, these records don’t completely apply to the line I’m researching, but I felt it was good to see.  One record was helpful as it concerned the son-in-law of my ancestor John Washington Womble and coupled with some other records I’ve found on the son-in-law it added more pieces to the jigsaw as why my ancestor moved to Hardeman County, Tennessee in the first place.

The deed books that I’ve read through at this writing are:

Vol. W January 1870-October 1871

Vol. X October 1871-November 1872

Vol. Y November 1872-February 1874

Vol. Z February 1874-January 1876

Vol. V September 1, 1868-January 29, 1870

Vol. U April 1867-September 11, 1868

Currently, I’m reading through Vol. T Oct. 30, 1866-April 29, 1867.

Another event in my research was reading a book on Reconstruction.  At first I checked out a book titled, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner.  The copy they had at my local library was published in 1988.  As my due date for returning the book got closer, I tried to renew it, but couldn’t.  I wound up purchasing an updated version kindle edition that was written by the same author and published in 2014.  This is a fantastic book in my opinion and gave me more insight into the time period that John Washington Womble lived in while he was in Nashville during the Civil War and why he and his family relocated to Hardeman County.

Unfortunately, it didn’t give me insight as to why they left briefly returning to live in Nashville for about a year or so and then returning to Hardeman County, but I likely need to read about the Panic of 1873 or do more research on the family as to their motivations.

After reading the book it sort of made me wonder why that point in history wasn’t covered in much detail in my American History class in high school.

I feel that in my research I’m reaching the end of what’s available deed wise just after the Civil War.  There appears to be a gap with either what the LDS church filmed of the deed books during the Civil War years or the recording of the records was interrupted because of the war.  My thought was to order the vols. AA-BB 1876-1879 next and then to move on to the older records before making a trip out to the Bolivar Courthouse to see what I’m missing.

It was interesting reading the Reconstruction book while reading through the deed books from the same era because I found items recorded that showed many people having financial problems as a result of the end of their way of life prior to the Civil War.  An interesting sight, were records recorded about events that happened before the war and the parties involved were now attempting to resolve their issues now that the fighting had ended.  One record was about a woman who purchased slaves before the war as part of an estate sale.  She had apparently purchased the people on credit and hadn’t paid what was owed on the slaves.  No mention was made in the record that the slaves were now free--only that she was past due on her debts.

Womble Property Search Happenings

I mentioned in my previous post, Census Research Update, about my plans for searching for the land that John Washington Womble lived on in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.  I’ve been searching through deed books W and X for records pertaining to land located in that specific area and have made copies of whatever documents I’ve found located in that area.  I’ve created some plats of the various tracts I’ve found and tried assembling them into what I think is the proper orientation.  So far, I’ve only been able to match up a couple of tracts with their correct neighbors, while other tracts end up being matchless and thus far have become random pieces of land that seem to fall within the vast space of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.

As I worked through what’s become a bit mind numbing a   I started toying with the idea of taking a research trip out to Bolivar in Hardeman County, Tennessee and visiting their courthouse and looking at plat maps which would likely tell me the orientation of the various plats of land I’ve found and where the land that John Washington Womble lived on was located.
Thinking about the project, my thoughts turned to how I could make this go faster or go about getting the information I want more easily.

The thought occurred to me to contact the courthouse myself and see if plat maps of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District were available.  I own a book, County Courthouse Book by Elizabeth Petty Bentley that I haven’t used much since receiving it as a Christmas gift many years ago.  I wasn’t sure if the information about the Hardeman County courthouse officials would be accurate, so I googled the courthouse and found their website.  The information on webpage about the Registrar’s office correlated with the information found in Bentley’s book an email address.  I sent an email to the registrar asking about plat maps for the area I’m researching and was told that they had some old copies of records that might be useful to me. 

I was elated at the news and gave the registrar my address so copies could be mailed to me.  About a week or so later, I received an envelope from the courthouse and opened it.  Inside were some maps, but they didn’t show individual plats for the area I’m researching.  One of the maps was nearly identical to one I already owned and had photocopied from a library book.  This one however contained notations on various roads or streams and other areas that I had read about in the various court records, road work orders, and deeds I’ve looked at.  Needless to say I was disappointed by what was sent to me.  It’s still not clear to me if the courthouse has plat books with the information I’m seeking.  However, I appreciate the registrar with providing me with these maps, because in its way there’s now more of an impetus to travel to Bolivar to seek out the information I want to find.

I’ve finished searching for deeds in the Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District in books W and X and plan to move on to searching for land in Civil District 11, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.  While reviewing the copies received from the courthouse, I did determine a factor in my searching.  That is that the location of the property I’m looking for is located near the Bolivar road.  I’ve seen this mentioned in a few other documents and know that some of the collateral Womble kin to my ancestor were assigned in the past to do repairs on this road.  I’ve collected a lot of deeds that follow the Hatchie River, but based on one of the maps sent to me the road is pretty much directly west of this river, so any properties I see that mention the river likely aren’t in the immediate vicinity of where John Washington Womble lived.

I likely realized this bit of geography when beginning this quest.  My thought probably was that if I platted all of the various land tracts within that specific region that I would be able to create the layout of what the neighborhood looked like.  Some research methods in National Genealogical Society Quarterly articles that I’ve read appear to demonstrate that the author has tried to focus on the land owning neighbors of an ancestor and using the census and deed records to build or recreate the neighborhood that way.  I’ve been attempting to do this, and am finding it challenging due to the fact that the names of the neighbors sometimes change over the years and it has appear nearly impossible to try to pin down when person X lived near person Y.  It almost seems that whoever is recording the deeds is going by their own memory or that of the person whose deed they’re recording.  Since there appears to be no check and balances in the accuracy of the names of the people being mentioned in the deeds how can one determine where these properties are really located within a specific county?  It seems surprising that a county government would have such a relaxed approach to recording their property records in the past.

Newspaper search for Womble family

I’ve used newspapers in my genealogical research in the past.  These searches have mostly taken place when I’ve done on site research in the town where my Womble ancestors have lived so it’s basically been limited to looking at microfilmed newspapers.  At times, I’ve been fortunate enough to find the “local” newspapers of my ancestors on microfilm at the Library of Congress.

Digitization of documents is becoming more pervasive and more easily accessible to the public.  Newspapers along with other records used in genealogical research are being digitized as well.  Sites such as the Library of Congress offers free access to a selection of digitized newspapers.  This collection seems limited to those newspapers published before the early 1920’s, which has put a limit to what I can find about some of my Womble ancestors. 

I’ve tried other means of locating the information I’ve been looking for such as obituaries of my great grandfather, Albert Womble’s siblings.  One of my successes involved finding an obit that had been put on the site Photobucket and there I was able to make contact with a distant cousin who had posted several pictures and articles about the Womble family.

While I was at RootsTech this year, I considered the possibility of using the site Newspapers.com to search for news articles from the Savannah Courier a newspaper published Savannah, Tennessee which is the county seat of Hardin County, Tennessee.  Previously, at the Family History Library I had found the book by Tony Hays, No Man’s Land: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Hardin County.  The preface stated that the book is a compilation of articles that were originally published in Savannah Courier.  The book mentioned a lot of events and accounts of happenings in Hardin County before and after the Civil War.  However, I wasn’t sure what to do with the information since the author didn’t include more detailed sources other than that the information came from the Savannah Courier.  I talked with another genealogist while in Salt Lake City about my findings in Tony Hays’ book and what searching I could do to verify or if I should verify the information in his book.  I was encouraged to attempt to verify the information and told that what needed to be done was to attempt to track down issues of the Savannah Courier and read them to correlate the information in Hays’ book with the articles in the newspaper. 

This led me to talk to the folks at the Newspapers.com booth and see if the Savannah Courier was a newspaper that they had in their collection.  Unfortunately it wasn’t, however this didn’t cause me to completely disregard the usefulness of the website. 

Sometimes research ideas come to me indirectly.  I happened to be looking through my newsfeed on Facebook, where I’ve joined a few genealogy groups.  One of these the Tennessee GenealogicalSociety posted an article about finding maiden names for ancestors.  The article brought up searching newspapers for maiden names and someone commented on searching for digitized records on the site Missouri Digital Heritage.  This set off the thought in my mind to search for digitized California newspapers for the obituary of Albert Womble’s brother, Thomas J. Womble.  I had tried to find San Bernardino, California newspapers available at various universities, but had always come up empty handed.

This new idea of searching for digitized San Bernardino, California newspapers led me to the site, California Digital Newspaper Collection.  They didn’t have what I was looking for so I wound up googling “digitized San Bernardino Sun” and came across this newspaper available on the Newspapers.com site.

 I was able to search the site to see if the time period I was interested in was available and it was.  Previous research I’d done on Thomas had given me a clue as to his death date.   

My goal was to obtain a death certificate for him, but I’m sure that this won’t be available to me due to California’s strict privacy laws.  Also, I was hoping that an obituary would give me more information about his life and the Womble family. 

I signed up for the free 7 day trial and was able to find Thomas’ obituary in the San Bernardino Sun.  The clipping tool was fairly straightforward to use and I could then download and/or print the image.  After downloading it, I saved the image to my computer and for those of you who are regular readers of my blog, yes, I entered the search into my research log and wrote a citation for the obit—so I’m following my new system.

I considered going ahead and becoming a regular subscriber to Newspapers.com, but eventually decided against it.  The reason being while I loved the clipping, downloading, and saving features on the site, the functionality of these worked great for me and were better than what’s available on the Library of Congress’ digitized newspapers area, ‘Chronicling America.’ The truth is you can’t beat the cost of free stuff.  Also, I didn’t find the search feature to be any better or worse than the Library of Congress.  Yes, there is the limitation of not being able to search more recent newspapers on their site, but my focus is on mainly on older newspapers.  Perhaps, I will become a subscriber of Newspapers.com in the future if their collection comes to include more newspapers from Hardin County, Tennessee; Massac County, Illinois (specifically the Metropolis Planet); and a greater variety of Nashville newspapers. 

My free trial of the service did cause me to locate some real gems.  Such as the court case, Womble vs. Womble listed in an 1874 Nashville paper, delinquent tax lists from 1910 that listed my great grandfather, Albert Womble.  Finding him listed on these lists gave me more insight into his life as single father in Paducah and it wasn’t surprising to find him in such a list.  However, it was surprising to see the extent of his struggle with single parenthood after the death of his wife and how this seeped into other areas of his life.

Census Research Update

Back in August I wrote about extracting census data in an effort to learn more about my great, great grandfather, John Washington Womble.  As a correction to the previous post, the Civil Districts I extracted the census data from were the 12th and 13th from the 1870 census and then the 11th Civil District from the 1880 census.  I’m curious to learn where exactly in Hardeman County, Tennessee he lived and anything else this information can tell me about his life there.

This has been a long process and I’m not finished yet, and probably haven’t even reached the tip of the iceberg.  I spent the fall going through deed indices; yes some may say that wasn’t truly a great starting point because indices don’t always contain a thorough listing of everyone in a particular book.  However, I needed a place to start and knew going in that I would need to consult the deed books themselves to truly cover all of my bases.

I even ordered a roll of microfilm of surveys for Hardeman and made several copies of surveys that were located either entirely or partially in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.  This was the limit I set for what I would search in an effort to learn where his land was located, and yes I know I’m leaving out the 13th Civil District—I will cover that.

After collecting this information, which I knew wasn’t enough, I began to plat out the surveys I’d copied.  I tried using a free online program and considered purchasing an expensive program to help me plat all of these surveys.  Instead, I took the hard road and platted them by hand using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and at times a protractor when necessary.

This was time consuming, but interesting because I became drawn into what I believe may be the terrain of his neighborhood.  My thought is that John Washington Womble likely lived in the vicinity of the Hatchie River.  I could be wrong; as I haven’t finished platting all of the surveys I collected and haven’t finished my search of the properties that surrounded his.

I tried comparing my plats to the present day Hardeman County, Tennessee on Googlemaps, but still could never completely connect them enough to tie the plats with the images I found online.

While creating the plats, I found mention of a property that always seemed to be referred to in similar with sometimes varying terms:  Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others.  I first noticed this description in a land transfer from Aby Grantham to John J Womble.

The last name Claiborne is significant because it may be connected to John Washington Womble’s 2nd wife Rhoda Caroline Richardson.  Additionally, some of the property description of the land purchased by John J Womble seemed to mirror a neighboring property that coincidentally was owned by John Washington Womble, who I believe, was John J. Womble’s uncle.

I had the opportunity to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah this past February when I worked the NGS booth at the RootsTech/FGS conference.  There I did a page by page search through deed book W looking for land transactions that were in the area I’d cordoned off in my mind-Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.  Again I saw mentioned in various deeds the infamous, Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others and made copies of those.  Hopefully, I can use that plat as an anchor in which to join all the other “puzzle pieces” of plats that I’ve already created or will create and be able to fit John Washington Womble’s plat in amongst them.

Upon returning to Virginia, I’ve ordered microfilm from the FHL of deed books W and X and once it arrives plan to continue my page by page search for properties within Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.

My plan is that once I’ve gathered together those plats for the Civil District 12 that I’ll then work on locating plats for the 13th Civil District and then be able to put John Washington Womble’s 1870’s neighborhood together.

Census! Census! Census!

Back in May I watched a genealogy lecture where the speaker encouraged the audience, including me, to research our ancestor’s neighborhood.  I’ve heard this many times and have written posts about the FAN club principle for this very blog.  In my genealogical research I’ve tried to learn more about John Washington Womble’s life in Tennessee and understand more as to why he left Hardeman County, moved to Nashville, and then returned to Hardeman about a year later.

I had studied before the 1870 and 1880 Hardeman County, TN census records for his household, in addition to the households of some of his children, and nephew in an effort to answer my questions.  However, I wasn’t able to learn much else that was new information.

After watching that genealogy lecture, I remembered a genealogy class assignment where I had to analyze the data of 100 people each in two different census years in an area where one of my ancestors lived.  I had really enjoyed the assignment, and decided to do something similar.  However, since John Washington Womble lived in different civil districts in 1870 and 1880, that evidence told me that he likely moved to a completely different area in the county than the one that he lived in when he left in 1873.  I felt that it would be a good idea to extract the census data from the civil district that he moved to in 1870 and 1880 in order to learn more about the neighborhood into which he moved to.

I then downloaded each of the census pages for the 11^th civil district for the census years 1870 and 1880 and created spreadsheets for each year.  Then, I began going through the pages and extracting the names, ages, race, and occupation, etc. for each resident of that district.  It was a pretty long process and not very exciting, but I felt that I discovered some clues as to why John Washington Womble moved back there when he left Nashville and perhaps even why he moved there in the first place after the Civil War.

As I extracted the data, I did come across some problems with my plan.  A few pages of the 1880 census that I was extracting data from had parts of the pages damaged.  So, I didn’t have complete information on all of the residents in that district.  I tried viewing the records using different census record providers to see if perhaps I could find undamaged records.  However I wasn’t fortunate, and decided to just leave out that information since it wasn’t available and continued extracting. 

I’m still in the process of crunching the census data for both years, but will post again if I make any new discoveries. 

Research recap and where I’m headed part 2

At first in my research of the Hardeman County tax records, I thought that I could just view a small portion of them and get the information I wanted.  I found that this wasn’t possible because of the fact that it appeared that John Washington Womble never left Hardeman County because some version of his name always seemed to appear in the tax lists.

As I mentioned earlier, I looked at Hardeman County tax records from 1865-1880 that I ordered on microfilm from the Family History Library.  I made copies of the records that seemed pertinent to my research and then transferred that information into Excel spreadsheets.

Hardeman County Tax Records

According to the 1869 tax record book, the taxes collected were recorded on 30 May 1869.  The only explanation I can give for why John Washington Womble is not listed in the 1869 tax records is because he may not have owned land when the taxes were collected or perhaps he lacked sufficient income and so was considered to be exempt from paying taxes that year. 

 His oldest daughter, Ellen married Isham Bowling in that same county on 4 August 1869, so it seems likely that John Washington Womble and his family moved to Hardeman County probably in 1867 or even as late as winter 1868.

The J W Wamble listed in the 1870 tax list must be John Washington Womble.  The reason being is that the only item he’s taxed on is 83 acres of land. This property correlates to the 83 acres that is sold to P J Tranum in 1873.  I did find the record where John Washington Womble purchased 83 acres from Chalkley Grantham and his wife, Abby in a deed registered March 1872.  No other deeds were found for John W Womble in Hardeman  County before the deed recorded in 1872.

John W. Womble is listed in the 1870 U.S. census as living in Hardeman County, TN in the 12^th Civil District. 

•  A person with the same name appears in the 1871 tax list in District 12.

•  A J H Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1872 tax list.  The letter H is probably just a misspelling on the tax collector’s part.

•   J W Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1873 tax list.

John W Womble appears in the Nashville City Directory from 1874 to 1875.  The 1880 census does list a John Wash. Wamble the 11^th Civil District and the 1880 Agriculture census indicates that he is renting the land he’s farming.  This evidence suggests to me that John W. Womble left Hardman and when he moved back, moved to a different civil district. 

What I also found in looking at the census records, both population and agriculture schedules, was another Womble family living in Hardeman County.  This family is headed by a J J Womble who I believe to be John Jobes Womble.

John Jobes Womble

A J W Womble or an individual with similar name or initials appear in subsequent tax records after 1870 up until 1878 when I found a John Wamble listed living in district 11.

It’s my belief that John Jobes Womble is the son of John Washington Womble’s brother, Warren.  This belief is based on previous research that I’ve done on the Womble family line.  According to census records, John Jobes Womble had a son named John W Womble.  I haven’t been able to figure out if his middle name was also Washington; however, the name similarity creates the illusion that my ancestor never left Hardeman County, Tennessee.

                     

The only Womble/Wamble I found listed in the tax records from 1865 to 1869 was John Jobes Womble.  In 1870, there are three people with the Wamble surname, J J Wamble, A W Wamble, and J W Wamble.  The person named J W Wamble is paying tax on 83 acres of land.  Neither of the other two Wombles paid taxes on any land and all three are listed in District No. 12 just like the 1870 census.

According to the 1870 Tennessee constitution, Article II, section 28 that’s posted at http://www.tngenweb.org/law, all males between the age of 21 and 50 were taxed.  Because of this law, I believe that the J W Wamble listed on the tax lists after 1873 is John W. Womble, John Jobes Womble’s son.  In the 1870 census the John W listed in John Jobes’ household is said to be 16; therefore, by 1874, the son would have been about 21, so he must be the J W Wamble listed on the 1874 tax list and also those subsequent years.  John Jobes Womble is not listed in the tax records after 1878 so he must’ve aged out.  He’s is also listed in the 1880 U. S. census living in the 11^th Civil District and in the Agriculture census renting his farm.

Conclusion

It would seem that because tax records were found for people of the same name or similar variation of the name J W Womble between the years 1870 to 1881 that even though my ancestor sold land in 1873 that he somehow eked out an existence in Hardeman County during a period in this country’s economic history that prior to the Great Depression of the 1930’s was considered the greatest economic crisis that the United States had ever faced.

However, it’s doubtful that John Washington Womble stayed on in Hardeman County after selling his land to P J Tranum.  He was skilled as a tailor and likely believed that he could fall back on this by obtaining work in Nashville where he lived from 1874-1875.  This scheme of course didn’t work out and he must’ve sorely underestimated the economic impact of the financial crisis’ impact on his ability to hold onto a job.

At this date, it’s still unclear whether or not he received the remainder of the money owed Tranum owed him.  Nevertheless, he returned to Hardeman where his son, Adolphes, his daughter, Ellen and her husband, and his nephew John Jobes Womble were living and likely returned to farming, by renting land on which to farm.  Possibly, when he moved away he was unsure of the likelihood of his ability to stay employed, so saved part of the money obtained from the land sale to Tranum and used this to rent land.

Research recap and where I’m headed part 1

My last blog post was posted nearly towards the end of what had been an incredibly hot summer.  I had returned from the FGS conference in Ft. Wayne, IN where I had found what I believe to be the ‘missing’ Womble child that died during the Civil War and was buried in a cemetery in Nashville, TN. 

After finding this I wasn’t able to make any further headway with researching the family during the Civil War.  I wasn’t sure exactly how to obtain the court records for Robert Carter being accused of stealing a coat from H F Myers’ store.  I was curious as to what had happened with the land that the Womble family was living on in Hardin County, TN when the war started.  Since I found pretty good evidence that John brought his family with him to Nashville during the Civil War, I wondered if they had returned to that same land after the war ended.  While in Ft. Wayne I talked with people about what I had found out about the family’s experiences during the Civil War and asked how I could find out if they sold the land before leaving for Nashville or if it was more likely that they just never returned to Hardin after the war.

There is the possibility that the family did in fact return to Hardin after the war because the social security application of my great grandfather Albert Womble’s birth indicates that he was born there in 1866.  However, his personal papers seem to suggest that towards the end of his life he was trying to locate his birth record and that supposedly he had learned that it may have been on file in Nashville. 

It could also be that those notes I found of Albert trying to locate proof of when he was born are from when social security came into existence and he could’ve been concerned about trying to provide documentation of his birth so that he could begin receiving social security benefits.  I think it more likely that he wanted to obtain documentation because I found delayed birth certificates for his sister, Maude and brother, Ernest.

The information from Albert’s social security application about his birthplace and date is Albert’s own knowledge.  Even though, he was obviously present at his birth there’s no way he could’ve known the date or where he was.  Only his mother would’ve known that information and presumably Albert’s father was present at the birth.

So when I asked about how I could find out if the Womble family returned to Hardin after the war, it was suggested that I look at tax records.  I did a search on FamilySearch.org of available microfilms and then looked to see what was available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.  Nothing appeared to be available to me for Hardin County and I’m not and wasn’t at the time able to travel to Hardin to search for the records in the county courthouse. My attempt to get a book via interlibrary loan about the Civil War and post war life in Hardin County titled, No Man's Land: the Civil War and reconstruction in Hardin County, by Tony Hays didn’t pan out because it’s considered a reference book and so not available for interlibrary loan, so that part of my research project ended.

Then I began to think about attempting to hammer down the details of the family’s life in Hardeman County, Tennessee.  I knew from census records both population schedules and agriculture and Nashville city directories that they lived in Hardeman for awhile moved back to Nashville and then a short time later returned to Hardman.  They lived there for about ten years before relocating back to Nashville and both John Washington Womble and his wife, Rhoda Caroline died there in the city where they had married at the end of the Civil War.

My thinking with trying to learn more about the family’s Hardeman years was that if I was able to pinpoint when they arrived there then I could better figure out when exactly did they leave Nashville and did they ever return to Hardin as Albert’s social security application states.

In September 2013, I read a great article in the latest issue of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society’s Newsletter Westward into Nebraska. In it was an article about the Panic of 1873.  The article didn’t mention any Wombles or John Washington Womble, but it got me thinking about the land that he sold in December 1873.  The more I thought about that land the more I realized that I would have to transcribe the deed to figure out what was going on and what John W. Womble’s plans were.  In the meantime, I ordered tax records for Hardeman County from the Family History Library for the years 1876-1880.

While waiting for the microfilm to arrive, I transcribed the deed where John Washington Womble sells 83 acres of land to P J Tranum on 29 December 1873.  I had read through this deed many times and thought that I completely understood it; however, it wasn’t until I transcribed it that I saw what was really going on. 

J W Womble deed 83 acres to P J Tranum

The first page of the deed states that J W Womble is selling for $930 83 acres of land to P J Tranum.  $600 is paid to J W Womble upfront and 12 months credit is given to Tranum for the $330.  So presumably, P J Tranum needed to pay the remaining money to my ancestor either within or after one years time.

I had thought in the past that John W went off to Nashville to work while his family lived in Hardman to work the farm and when his employment prospects failed he returned home before moving with the whole family to Nashville about ten years later.  However, it seemed clearer that he was actually leaving Hardeman and his family would be going with him to Nashville.  The article in Westward into Nebraska about the Panic of 1873 gave me the idea that there was a bit more to John’s land transaction with P J and that was that by accepting part of the money upfront and allowing the balance to be paid after a year suggests to me that John W Womble wasn’t sure how easily he could find a job in Nashville or even once he found a job-if he could hold onto it.

The confusion of John W Womble’s moving to Hardeman to Nashville and back to Hardeman comes in when I begin looking at tax records and combine those findings with road orders.  If I took those records at face value, it would appear that John never left Hardeman County at all and never moved away to Nashville for a few years before returning to stay on in Hardeman for another ten years.

My suspicion was that I was dealing with multiple people with similar names that were listed in the tax records.  In order to make sure that’s what I was dealing with I wound up ordering and viewing tax records from 1865-1880.

Womble, Wamble, and Wormble?!

So, if you’re a regular reader of my blog you may know that I’ve been trying to learn more about the Womble family’s Civil War experience.  The family story is that John Washington Womble spent the Civil War working in Nashville, Tennessee as a tailor and left his children to fend for themselves in Hardin County, Tennessee.  I’ve already reported about finding an interment record for who may possibly be his first wife, Mary Jane in the Nashville City Cemetery.  I also located what I believe to be interments for two of his three children that were listed in the 1860 Hardin County, TN census, but no records seem to exist for them afterwards, until I found the cemetery information. 

1860 U.S. Census, Hardin County, Tennessee, John W. Womble household

While working at a genealogy conference last week in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I took the opportunity to visit the Allen County Public Library and do some work on this family story.  Whenever I’m researching the Womble family I keep in mind to be on the lookout for varying spellings of the family’s name.  One of the spelling variations I’ve come across is Wamble. 

At the Allen County Public Library I discovered another variation—Wormble—yes that’s right—Wormble.  I was looking through a book that was an index of interments in the Nashville City Cemetery.  I didn’t expect to find anything new, but I came across a Wormble, Frank.  The other two Womble children I found listed in a Nashville City Cemetery interment database were just listed as infant Wamble.  No ages were given for them except for the notation son and child of J. W. Wamble.

This notation gave me the impression that those listings were for the youngest two of the three “missing” Womble kids from the 1860 census.  So my thought was where is the oldest of the three youngest kids, Franklin?  I wondered if perhaps he died before John W. and Mary Jane relocated to Nashville.  However, based on my finding it appears that Franklin died that same summer of 1861 along with his two youngest brothers.

I can’t believe that the family would’ve taken only the youngest children with them to Nashville when the war started.  It was a different time back then and kids did grow up and take on adult responsibilities even when they were teenagers or pre-teens.  However, leaving even teenagers to essentially fend for themselves in an uncertain era and a potentially dangerous environment coupled with the fact that I’ve found evidence suggesting that John W.’s wife and some of their children were in the city with him makes me think that the story isn’t true. 

More research will have to be done on this to see if I can find anything else that may disprove my theory and prove the validity of the story.

Using Collateral Research to Verify Womble Civil War Story

Previously, I posted about wanting to find out if a family story was true. This was posted on this blog March 23, 2013. I’ve spent much of the summer trying to confirm the story’s validity by researching the H. F. Myers who co-signed John Washington Womble’s marriage bond to his 2nd wife, Rhoda Caroline Richardson.

My thought had been that by finding out more about this Myers guy, I would either learn some connection between him and John’s 2nd wife, or uncover a connection between Myers and my John W.

Census records revealed that H. F. Myers would’ve been a contemporary of John’s, since he was 36 in 1860 and John was about 42. Nashville city directories showed that Myers was a merchant and more specifically owned a tailor shop on Cedar St. in the city. The 1866 Nashville city directory lists John W. Womble’s profession as a tailor. His occupation is further backed up by other census records, city directory listings, and family lore.

However, I’m sure that there were many other tailor shops in Nashville in the early to mid-1860’s that could’ve employed my great-great grandfather. Yet, if John didn’t work for him then why would Myers co-sign a marriage bond for a man that he didn’t have any connection to?

I viewed land records that H. F. Myers purchased around the point in time when John would’ve been living in the area thinking that he might be listed as a witness. However, John wasn’t a witness to these records or at least that detail wasn’t recorded.

Shortly after the Civil War ended and after John and Rhoda married, H. F. Myers died. He left a will, but the will doesn’t mention John. Nor, is John mentioned as having witnessed Myers writing the will when it was presented in court. I still haven’t been able to view the court case of Robert Carter for stealing a coat from Myers’ store in May 1865. It may be that John didn’t witness the theft, because it occurred after he and Rhoda married, he may have been on his honeymoon or have left the city.

As a way to further my research I got a book via inter library loan on the occupation on Nashville during the Civil War. The book makes mention a few times that when the Confederate military was vacating the city and the Union troops were moving in that so many businesses were closed. The city streets were so void of people as if it were a Sunday.

Reading this made me wonder how John could’ve continued to live in the city without being able to go to work. However, the fact that he married there in 1865 seems to give evidence that he somehow was able to eke out an existence. Myers could’ve lost many employees as people enlisted in the military or vacated the city at the start of the war or later when the Union army took over. John could’ve decided to stay on in the city, because by the time that the Confederates were losing their hold on Nashville, his wife might have been too ill to travel back to their home in Hardin County. By sticking it out in the city, John could’ve shown his loyalty to Myers. This might have led Myers to co-sign John’s marriage bond to show his appreciation or gratitude.

There’s also the idea that when John initially worked as a tailor in Nashville that he didn’t work for Myers, but did later because his previous boss decided to close up shop and leave the city before the Union forces arrived.

Womble Research—Expect the Unexpected and When You Least Expect It

2013 so far has been an interesting year for my genealogical research.  It even ended with my unanticipated luck of finding church records of the Wombles in Nashville, Tennessee.  Thus being able to connect the family to the Methodist faith has opened up a new avenue of records to research.  I still haven’t received the records I ordered from the Tennessee Conference Archives and while I’m really not happy about that repository taking my money and not bothering to deliver the records I ordered, I’ve decided to attempt to move on with my research.  Perhaps, it’s just a sign that one needs to visit that repository in person to ensure getting the necessary information.

Despite this set-back, I’ve found some interesting finds and while some of them aren’t definitive proof of the events they suggest.  They do give me food for thought about the few stories I grew up hearing about the Womble family. 

One of the stories involved the Civil War, it was told to me by an uncle after talking to him about my interest in Womble genealogy.  He told me that during the Civil War, John Washington Womble went to work in Nashville, Tennessee to sew uniforms for the Confederate soldiers while the kids or the rest of the family stayed on the farm (which was located in southwestern Tennessee) with their servants.

Several years ago while doing some research at the TSLA in Nashville, I did find John Washington Womble listed in a Civil War era city directory.  There was also his marriage record to his 2^nd wife, Rhoda Caroline Richardson showed that the marriage took place in Nashville around the end of the war.  This gave some strength to the story and so I tried searching around for a record of his 1^st wife, Mary Jane Stephens’ death in southwestern Tennessee.  Unfortunately, at present my cursory search for death or burial records hasn’t revealed any evidence that Mary Jane died during the years of the Civil War.  There’s the possibility that the couple could’ve just split up, but no research has revealed this either.  Also, nothing I found suggested that this family had the money to hire servants or own slaves.

The more I thought about the story, the more it seemed strange to me that John Washington would’ve left his wife and kids alone to take care of the farm, while he went off to the city to work during such an uncertain era as the Civil War. 

While researching a member of John Washington Womble’s FAN club in the City Cemetery database at the Nashville Public library, I put in the last name Womble and didn’t get anything of interest.  Then I put in the alternate spelling of Wamble and up came, two young children who were the children of a J. W. Wamble.  As well as, a Jane Wamble, age 37. The name is very similar to Mary Jane, and Wamble is a common alternate to Womble. Jane’s age also correlates with the age of John’s wife in the 1860 Federal Census.  Could this be Mary Jane Stephens, who was supposed to be living down on the farm and not living with her husband while he toiled away tailoring uniforms?

If it is, it paints a different picture then the one I’d envisioned of the family’s life during the Civil War.  I didn’t let my search end with a find on the internet.  I ordered a copy of the interment record along with the lot card from the Metro Archives of Nashville and Davidson County.  Unfortunately, a lot card wasn’t available, but I did get a copy of the interment record.  It doesn’t give me any more additional information, except to show that the record isn’t just a figment of someone’s imagination.

I still have no idea if the Jane Wamble I found is in fact Mary Jane Stephens, but since nothing else has been found to suggest she isn’t, it does appear that John Washington Womble may have brought his wife and youngest children to Nashville with him during the course of the war.

It still seems incredibly stupid that someone would leave their children home alone while a war is going on, but perhaps John and Mary Jane believed as so many others did that the war wouldn’t last very long.  For all I know, Mary Jane could’ve planned to spend the duration of the war on the farm and traveled with her children or possibly the two youngest to Nashville to visit John.  The children could’ve gotten sick and died, and then the same could’ve happened to Mary Jane.

What’s interesting when thinking about these Womble stories is that the story says one thing and the records suggest something almost entirely different.  If I step back a bit and try to take in the whole picture, I can see where this story about the Womble family’s Civil War era experiences possibly came from something else. 

After taking in this story and the records I’ve found, is the suggestion that the story my uncle told me actually is about how almost ten years after the Civil War, John Washington Womble went to work in Nashville quite possibly planning to relocate the whole family there.  So, he left his 2^nd wife, Rhoda Caroline Richardson and children to seek work in Nashville.  In my collection of Womble memorabilia, is a tin type photo of a woman, that I believe is Rhoda.  It’s my belief that since he was leaving her and their children behind that he wanted something to remember her by, so the picture was taken of her.  Also about ten years after the war, John W. Womble is listed off and on in the Nashville City Directory.  In the 1880’s the Nashville city directory list, his wife, Rhoda and their children, who are now young adults, which strongly suggests that they’re living in the city with him.

I may never truly learn the truth of the Womble family’s experiences during the Civil War, but in a sense I feel that I’m a bit closer to what may have actually transpired.