Remembering Phyllis Harper

I grew up in Northeast Mississippi. The major daily newspaper in our area was the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo). There was one column that I never wanted to miss. That was the column by Phyllis Harper who shared about her beloved Fawn Grove, a small Itawamba County community in which she lived. While I have long since forgotten the specific content of most of her columns, there is a fondness in my heart for the community of Fawn Grove because of Phyllis' writings. It was a sad day when her last column was published. Phyllis had a gift for evoking a real sense of place in her writing. Those of us who read her felt that we knew Fawn Grove almost as well as the towns in which we lived.

Her obituary can be found here. Readers of the paper are sharing their memories of Phyllis here.

National Library Week Tribute #7: The Historical Society Library

I know all of you have been wondering which library I would choose for my 7th. The truth is that there are just too many libraries out there. I hated to name one historical society library without mentioning them all because they are such great depositories of regional information. I'm going to name a few examples here, but all historical society libraries are included in this seventh tribute.



First of all, I want to mention the Itawamba Historical Society's Library in Mantachie, Mississippi. They are located in the Poteet History Center. If you are researching ancestors in Itawamba County, their library is a "must visit." They have a tremendous collection of family histories from the area. You can purchase back issues of Itawamba Settlers to complete your collection. They also have an ongoing book sale there. You can browse and find a few titles of interest for your personal library.



Another society's library I want to mention is McLean County (Illinois) Historical Society. They have microfilms of many of the older courthouse records there which you can photocopy much more cheaply than you can at the nearby courthouse. I found city directories that were extremely helpful to me which covered even small towns like Carlock where my ancestors lived. I was only able to be there for a short time, but the staff was most helpful to me during my brief visit. (I'd spent too much time tromping about the cemetery earlier! You know how that goes with genealogists.)



Then there is the "ultimate" historical society--the New England Historic Genealogical Society. I'm looking forward to another visit there this summer. The photo below was made after FGS conference in 2006. They have all kinds of wonderful resources there! You can't ignore them if you have New England ancestry. The society is located in the Back Bay area on the very trendy Newbury Street. It's not far from the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common. You can even do lunch "where everybody knows your name" or at many other great restaurants in the area. This library is also within walking distance of another great library, the Boston Public Library. Well, I must go and prepare for my visit to the NEHGS Library!

Monroe & Itawamba County Mississippi 1908

Lisa, over at 100 Years in America, has challenged Genea-Bloggers to answer the question "Where was your family in 1908?" This is an easy question to answer as they were all in Monroe County, Mississippi except one to the best of my knowledge.



The Cape Thornton family lived out on "the old home place" in Becker. Cape's father James M. was in the Parham Community by that time, having recently moved from Alabama.



The Abraham Lantz family lived in the Aberdeen area.



Jennie Phillips Fowlkes Howell lived with her second husband John Howell and some of the children of both marriages on her land off what is now Ritter Road close to where the Pickle Barrel is just outside of Amory as far as I know.



The one exception was Nancy Malinda Allred Duke Rogers who was living with her second husband John W. Rogers, sheriff of Itawamba County, in Fulton.

On this day in 1812

On November 12, 1812, my second great grandfather Walton A. Harris was born. He is believed to be the son of Charles Harris and Dicey Davis who married 22 January 1811 in Wayne County, Kentucky. Better proof of this relationship is needed but it is based partly on recollections of my grandmother about where she heard he was born (and the state of Kentucky is corroborated by census records) and partly on naming patterns. (His first son was named Charles Newton presumably after father. His second son was named John Jasper, presumably after his grandfather John. His second daughter was called Dicey although her name was Dianna C., presumably after his mother. Some of the children were named after his wife's family.) The reason his parents have been so difficult to identify has been because Walton removed from the area in which his family lived. Family tradition states that he was on a cattle drive from Kentucky to the Starkville, Mississippi area. Along the way, they stopped to water the animals at the farm of his future father-in-law Caleb Mosely. Tradition says that his future wife Margaret was lying in a petticoat on a table when they met. He was so enamored of her that after delivering the cattle, he returned to Tennessee to wed Margaret. The best estimate of this date is in 1840 because Walton has not been located in the 1840 census, and it appears that Margaret is enumerated with her father in that year. Their first daughter was born in 1841. I have seen some estimates of their marriage date as early as 1838. No marriage record has been located. Giles County suffered a record loss in 1865.

I have no idea how much truth there is to this family story about the cattle drive and petticoats; however, in discussing it informally with professional genealogists most have said there appears to be at least some element of truth in it. Wouldn't it be neat to find a record of a sale of cattle from Kentucky to someone in the Starkville area? Mississippi State's predecessor (The Agricultural and Mechanical College of the State of Mississippi) was not founded until 1862 so a sale to the land grant university would not have been an option.

I haven't had a lot of time to spend researching this line prior to their arrival in Itawamba County, Mississippi. With the record loss in Giles County, it is going to be difficult. However, I am hopeful that some more progress can be made when I do get to work on this line with such a common surname.

On one census, Walton's name is spelled Walther; however, the majority identify him as Walton as does my grandmother's Bible.