A Handful of Beards

 My thoughts have been with the Beard and Bearden families of late. I've gone through years of newspapers, and still they hide. Finding little stories or bits about social life helps to flesh them out. These families are escaping me. 

I wrote last about Charlie Beard. His wife was Nancy Elizabeth Bearden, born March 12, 1865 in Bennettsville Alabama. She was the 10th child of Roland Bearden and Lucinda White. She died in 1944. My grandmother, Bizzie Lee Beard Brock, told me she had spent a great deal of time with Nancy after the death of her mother, Beatrice Brown Beard, my biggest brick wall. She did not tell me much about Nancy on a personal level. 

My grandmother was the only child of Charles Pinkney Beard and Beatrice Brown. Beatrice died in 1911 when my grandmother was barely 2 years old. In the 1910 census in Etowah County, Alabama, Beatrice was 18, my grandmother was listed as Lee B and 9 months old. In the 1920 census, same place, Pink is married to Myrtle Fanchier. The census lists my grandmother as Busylee. I have always, even as a child, wondered where on earth that name came from. Is it really Bizzie Lee? I know she was called Bizzie Lee by everyone. Where did it come from?

My father was Bizzie Lee's oldest child. He said to me long after her death, that losing his father was bad, but when he lost her something inside him broke. I should be happy they can be together now, but I miss them both so much. I know what dad meant by something inside being broke. Losing him was that for me. Time does not dull the pain of loss.

Well, now I want to go cry. This post got away from me. 

Oh yes, just in case, Beatrice Brown was born May 29, 1890. I only know her father was R. F. Brown.  She died October 1, 1911.  

Beatrice Brown and Charles Beard, (22 August 1907), Alabama Marriage: 318; FamilySearch, , Alabama.

1910 US Census, 1910 US Census, (Cox, Etowah County, Alabama); Page: 12 Dwelling 37 Family 37, T624, no. 13, HeritageQuest.

"Alabama Deaths, 1908-1974," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JK3C-LX5 : 27 November 2014), Charlie Beard in entry for Nancy Elizabeth Beard, 28 Sep 1944; citing reference cn 19204, Department of Health, Montgomery; FHL microfilm 1,908,788.

Charles P. Beard - Myrtle Haynie marriage, (12 June 1914), Book S - Alabama Marriages: 504; FamilySearch, , Alabama., 504.

1920 U.S. Census, 1920 U.S. Census, (Cox, Etowah County, Alabama); Page: 80 Dwelling 302 Family 305, T625, T625, NARA, Heritage Quest.

Charles Henry Beard

 Charlie is my second great-grandfather. He was born in George to John A. and Malinda Cook Beard in 1852. He was the 4th of 10 children. This is who I have been working on at the moment. I have several mysteries to solve where he is concerned. 

I have not yet found a marriage record for him and first wife, Jane. They had 3 children, Francis M., also known as Frank, who I am still chasing, James A., which turns out I had him with the family but had not known who he really was. He is James Andrew, my mysterious "Drew". I know much more about him now. Last, but not least, Malinda who is a mystery too. 

 Charlie is 26 in the 1880 census and married to Jane with 3 children. He's a farmer, I think, born in Georgia. The census said his occupation was stacking wood? It looks like stacking anyway. Hard to believe that could be an occupation. I will have to look into that. I imaged that perhaps Jane was home when the census taker showed up and she said her husband was out stacking wood. He made the assumption that was his job. LOL Maybe it was a real job back then.

Does it say stacking wood?

Jane was suddenly gone and he married Nancy Elizabeth Bearden, my second great-grandmother, on April 16, 1884. 

In the 1900 census I learned that census takers did not need to know how to spell. He was listed as Barde, C. H., Nancy as Nannie, and my great-grandfather was Chutly. His actual name was Charles Pinkney, mostly known as Pink. I went down the entire census page. The census taker could not spell. Really. Anyway, he is renting a farm. He could read and write, which I can prove. Charlie is 48. 

This is my instance of proof of writing on the marriage record of his daughter Lucinda. It is written in pencil.

Charlie died at age 50 in Turkeytown, Etowah County, Alabama on June 28, 1902. I was able to find the notice of his death in the The Gadsden Times-News.

Transcription:

Charlie Beard Dead.

Last Sunday afternoon at his home in Turkeytown beat, Charlie Beard passed away to the great beyond, leaving a bereaved wife and some six or seven little children. Mr. Beard had been ill about ten days and the disease would not yield to treatment. He was a splendid farmer and a hard worker and always made a good living. We extend our sympathies to the bereaved ones.

1880 US Census, 1880 Census, (R 9, Blue Pond Beat, Cherokee, Alabama, United States); , HeritageQuest.

Charley Beard and Nancy Bearden, (16 April 1884), Alabama Marriages, 1816-1957: FamilySearch, Alabama.

1900 US Census, 1900 US Census, (Hollis Precinct, Etowah, 

Alabama, United States); , HeritageQuest.

"Alabama County Marriages, 1809-1950," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:29NF-JRG : 19 February 2021), Yancy Baker and Lucinda Beard, 03 Mar 1909; citing Marshall, Alabama, United States, County Probate Courts, Alabama; FHL microfilm 2,266,556.

The Gadsden Times-News, Gadsden, Alabama, Friday, July 4, 1902

Page 2. Newspapers.com

Happy Fall

 The leaves all changed and are almost gone now. I was here but I blinked and it's over. It was beautiful for a day.

I had to get a new computer. It has Windows 11 on it, and I find I like it very much. I love the look of it, very clean yet familiar. Nice rounded corners. So far so good. I just have to name him. Still thinking on that.

Firefox is a pain. Not working at all well. I had to remove Chrome. I don't know for sure, but I think it lost it's mind. And, it was up to date. I may try again later, but right now I am too mad at it. I have been using Edge. I've become a big Edge fan now! It is so fast and light, very pleasing to the eye, and it takes all my chrome add-ons! Firefox continues to pop up a little window asking if I want to switch my default to it. It’s just too needy and clingy to take serious. LOL It's very slow compared to Edge. 

I've been working to learn RootsMagic 8. I'm surprised by the software, as I have found that I hate the thing. I've loved RootsMagic up through version 7.  I don't understand version 8. Seems to me it would have been better to keep improving on what works really well. 7 is friendly, 8 is not. What I can do in 7 with 2 clicks, I need at least 4 clicks in 8. I have to stop and look for too many things in 8 while I am working. Some things I'm still looking for and I'm beginning to think they're not there. I wish I had written everything out as I tried to find them, but I did not. It is definitely no ready for prime time. It was being sold at least 2 years ago, and just came out in October? I bought my copy at RootsTech 2021.  I've had no trouble coming up with a name for 8, by the way. I'd probably go to blogger jail if I told you, so it will remain a secret. At any rate, my question now is, how long will 7 be supported? I believe it is important to stay up to date if you want your work to live beyond you. So, what to do? I have Legacy, but it is not the answer as it too has a name I can’t say. I know FamilyTreeMaker, but it is crazy expensive. I'm so sad. I love RootsMagic 7 so much.

Trying to get caught up on Wikitree. I love this site. I had not added anything new for a long time. Now, I try to get there once a week and add a little. How many people check Wikitree? Everyone should. I need my work to be out there and current  since I removed my personal family site from RootsWeb. I believe they (Ancestry) are slowly getting rid of it, so I took the step of taking it down. It was in need of a major update. I could look at other places. I don’t know where most of us family history keepers keep sites now. 

Very busy couple of weeks. 

Photo by <a href="https://freeimages.com/photographer/awottawa-49436">Alistair Williamson</a> from <a href="https://freeimages.com">FreeImages</a>

Being Driven to Share Data!

 

I am the County Coordinator for 2 counties in the ALGenWeb, DeKalb and Etowah. I had originally planned to just clean them up and babysit them. For some reason I can't seem to do that. Now, I am over-whelmed with material I want to get online, but I am one person, so it will take a while. When I gave up the counties in Indiana, I had planned not to get involved again. When talking to the Alabama SC, I somehow ended up with two counties. Both are counties that have my family in them. My dad was born and raised in Collinsville in DeKalb County. My great-grandparents, Patrick and Addie Brock lived in the Sand Mountain area of Marshall County. (That one I do not have, but it does has a very good coordinator.) 

The problem I am running into is that both counties are quiet. No traffic. I put several obits on DeKalb yesterday, and I'm hoping that I can determine whether there is any activity, I added a search engine to make it easier to search what I am putting on the site, and also a little counter. It is very quiet so far.

Most of the GenWeb is still online. Many counties have a lot of wonderful data on them. Does no one ever check them for free data? Much of the online data there is not found free anywhere else. Also, it is a good place to find data that is not run of the mill, birth, death or marriage. Great place to flesh out the ancestors.

Every state that is online has many counties needing a coordinator. The GenWeb has not gone away. Add a link to it and check regularly for data. Donate Data! Adopt! Please! It is still relevant. 

DeKalb  ALGenWeb

Etowah ALGenWeb

Searching For George Brought Sadness

 

I'm still working on photos. I have made a huge dent though. Two large folders are done, and I am working on the next folder, which is larger than the last one, so I will be in it for a while. But they are correctly named and meta data added.

When I need a break I type out obits to add to the program. I have 9 left to do. No problem there! I think an obituary is my favorite source. Yes, I know they are not always right, but for the most part they are. They have a lot of hints in them that can get you to the next step. Anyway, I had a George M. Woodson that did not seem to fit anywhere into my family. I was fairly certain that he should fit in. As I was typing out his obit, the only person I recognized listed was an aunt, Cora Woodson Jaynes. I had no siblings listed for Cora in my program, though I knew her parents names. George died in Italy in 1943. I made the assumption that he was brought home for burial. I then went to Find-A-Grave. No George buried in Indiana. When I removed the place of burial, George Marion Woodson popped up, having died in Italy in 1943. He was buried in Italy. I know, duh. In my defense, most of my people that died on foreign soil in WWII were brought back for burial, at least they have grave sites in the county. I'm not going to check that they are in them! 

Then, another problem. He had no parents or siblings listed on his page on Find-A-Grave. I knew from the obit that his parents were Louis and Mary Woodson. So I went looking for Louis Woodson. No luck there. I had not searched for Cora on Find-A-Grave before, so I tried that. I found her, her parents and siblings were listed. Interesting. There was a Lewis. Not Louis. Spelling can give me a headache. On his page there is no George listed as his son. In the newspaper obit I have, a John Bias was listed as an uncle. Lewis Woodson married Mary Belle Bias. On FamilySearch it was all laid out. In the obit was listed a Mrs. Reichenba and a Mrs. Mae Wheeler as sisters, while in another little blurb article about his death, sisters were listed as Mae Woodson and Mrs. Lucille Reichenba. I know where he fits now. They were all listed as children of Lewis Woodson. There was no death information on George. He was 25 when he died with no wife or child, and obviously forgotten over time. I will have to go and remedy that (and hope it stays corrected). I'll add the obit as well. Now to find sources to go with it all.

This talk about WWII got me thinking about my uncle, Ermil Trapp. He was killed in the Battle for Metz, France in 1944, part of a tank brigade. My mother, a 9 year old at the time, remembered going to meet the train carrying his body home for burial. I know that this ritual happened over and over again. I put their obits and stories on the Jackson County INGenWeb site when I was the CC there. I remember typing out the obits for two brothers. They were the only children the family had. This family gave their all, and I don't know how they kept from falling under the weight of sorrow. I would have to limit myself to only one obit and article a day because I would feel sick after doing more, I wanted to cry all the time. 

These guys are the original Antifa. They gave their lives so we would not have to live under Fascism. It's time to remember that, the price they paid for this freedom we have, and hold it dear.  

Picture from Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/images/search/tree/)

Photos, Photos, and More Photos

 Alex Trebek is gone.

2020 just needs to be over. 

I have been working behind the scenes for a couple of months getting to all those things I have put off for years. I've just finished organizing and going through each and every one of my digital photos. It says I have 38,558 files. Those are only photo files. ONLY photos. I am a little surprised and alarmed because I still have several albums to scan, and I bet I will run onto another folder full at some point. I still have work to do inside each folder, as I want to make sure they are all tagged. Some are and some aren't at this point. Also, I may consider that I do not have to keep every photo. It's hard for me to throw them out, but I don't have to keep every photo. Right?  I don't have any problems arguing that I do need to keep them all, but the number of files is overwhelming. I'm spending some time thinking about what to do. 

I scanned each album as it was organized by the owner of the album. Each page had several photos on it that I would "cut" apart to make individual photos. I have the original album pages in a large folder listed as "Main Album". I'm thinking I could cull the main single files down to a nice overview of the years, and keep the "albums" together as they are. I have my grandmother's, my dad's, my mother's, and so on. Until recently they were only kept on external hard drives and DVDs. 

I want to get them pared down and maybe upload most to Google Photos. I just bought a book by Lisa Louise Cooke called "ULTIMATE Genealogist's GOOGLE Toolbox". I watched her video on YouTube about Google Photos and was impressed, not just with Google Photos but with the price for more space. I will certainly need more space than the free space that I have left. I had originally bought the book for all the rest of the information in it, but really got a bonus with the Photos part. I did not know what was offered in Photos.

When I need a break I type out an obituary. That is the next thing on the list to do. I have an enormous file of obits that need typed out and entered into my database. So that is the next chore. After that, articles and books. Plus research. 

It's going well. So far.

A Sort Of Rant.

There must be a better way to communicate. Particularly in the genealogy community. It's been a long time since I've had a really good genealogy discussion.

I have a hard time enjoying Facebook anymore. I dislike the politics and ethics of the founder. I dislike the trolling. A lot of people in the genealogy community have said it has helped them enormously, but I haven't found it to be so. By the time I have read through my timeline I am tense. There is a new facebook-like community called LIKER. (https://www.liker.com/) It seems to be politics. I did not find any genealogy mentioned, but there were other categories. You have to sign up to see them, I did not. It bills itself as a liberal social media. We need conversation between everyone, all thoughts and beliefs. Right now that is impossible. Makes me think of something I heard many years ago, I don't know where, but it jumped into my mind. What is the sound of one hand clapping? That's what a conservative network or a liberal network would be. One hand clapping.That's where we are.

Then there is MEWE, which I tried. (https://mewe.com/) Didn't work out and we broke up. Maybe it has changed now, since that was a long time ago. It was pretty quiet, but it promises not to sell you to the highest bidder. At a certain point you have to pay, only so much free space. The only invites to me, were from men wanting to meet women. Yeah, I'm Debbie Downer, not interested.

I want to find genealogy discussions that are going on without joining a million groups to cover everything. I want my interests separate, not all jumbled together. I do more than one thing. I don't want to support the FB guy. I want a certain amount of privacy. I continue to get recommendations to friend people I follow on Instagram. NO. I have two sign-ins that are different, one for FB and one for Instagram. I have not connected them in any way. How did he even know? I don't know what to do about that, but I want to stop it.

I want too much. I know. It is a sad state of affairs.

I want 2020 to be over.