The Mystery that Started It All (part 5)

 

Note:  This is a continuation from previous posts.  To start back at part 1, click here.

On the evening of May 19, 2022, I was browsing the newly-released, newly-indexed 1950 census records on Ancestry.  I had already found all four of my grandparents, several of my great-aunts and uncles, two sets of great-grandparents, and one set of great-great-grandparents.  Because finding out more about my Grandma Eva and her first husband is always sitting somewhere in the back of my mind when I am doing family history research, I had a thought — I wonder if I can find G.W. Bryant in the 1950 census.  Maybe I could finally find out where he went after he left my grandmother and they divorced.

Pieced Together: Lucy Belle Friddle Davis and George Washington Davis

There is a photograph on my wall, taken from an airplane sometime in the last century: a white-roofed brick farmhouse, a dark stand of oaks, plowed fields running off in every direction, and a dirt road going by. It was the home George and Lucy Davis built, and it reached my wall the way nearly everything of theirs has reached me — hand to hand, mother to daughter, down through the women of my family until it eventually made its way to me.

I never met them. George died in 1963 and Lucy in 1974, both before I was born. What I have of them is a stack of documents, a handful of photographs, two long remembrances their daughter Martha wrote, the memories of my grandmother and my mother, and some photos of quilts. So this is not a story I remember. It is one I pieced together — which, given how these two spent their lives, feels like the only honest way to tell it.

The home George and Lucy built near Piedmont — the photograph that hangs on my wall.

Let me start where they started.

What happened to John Powell? Part 3 - GUEST BLOG!

South Carolina State Archives

Note:  This is a continuation from a previous post.  To start back at part 1, click here.

Long overdue...

You know, when I started this blog a year ago, I had the best of intentions.  First, I planned to write a post every week.  Then, after the first few posts, I realized that the level of research involved wouldn't allow for that.  I needed more time to be able to do the proper amount of research to develop a good story - you know, one that people might actually want to read.  I don't want to bore you folks to death with a bunch of dry, boring lists of names and dates, after all.  So then I thought maybe I could do a post once per month.  But alas - life got in the way, as it often does, and my genealogy research, which I consider to be my "me" time, all too often got shoved to the back burner.

William Henry and Nancy Jane Knight Davis

"Aunt Marthie" - Martha Jane Davis
(1918-2003)

My 2nd great-aunt (through my maternal line), Martha Jane Davis, was a high school English teacher at Wren High School in Anderson, South Carolina for many years, as well as a family historian.  "Aunt Marthie," as she was called, was the sister of my great-grandmother, Ruth Beatrice Davis Garrett.  Aunt Marthie's research, along with the research of my maternal grandfather's sister, Margaret Foster Limbaugh, has provided the basis for much of what I know about my mother's side of my family tree.