The Jordan's of Chatham County, North Carolina

I posted this on the Ancestry Community site as well. Lydia Jordan is my brickwall on my wife's family line.

If anyone is currently doing or has done research on the Jordan family from the Siler City area of Chatham County, North Carolina, I'd appreciate your input.

I'm researching my wife's maternal grandfather's, Pop (b.13 Jan 1912 d. 31 Oct 2008), family, the Jordan's. The oldest census I have found is from 1850 which shows Judy Jordan, Louisa, Milly, Lydia and John (twins), Marion and Rhoda (possibly Judy's mother or sister?). Judy's census information doesn't show a "head of household" entry for 1850 or 1860 (so where did the surname come from and what was her maiden name?).

Judy (Pop's great grandmother) (b. abt 1808) apparently died sometime after the 1860 census. In the 1860 census, there appear to be five adults other than Judy in the house, some I believe are Lydia's siblings based on relative ages.

Lydia (Pop's grandmother) (b. abt 1836, d. 2 Dec 1925) shows up in the 1860 census with three children Sarah, James and William. Again, no head of household entry.

The youngest child from the 1860 census, William (b. 1 Apr 1858, d. 30 Dec 1926) is Pop's father. What's odd is that the women appear to be passing the Jordan surname down to their kids without a head of household entry in the census. The really interesting thing is that there is evidence that Pop's father William had a younger sister, Julia (b.11 Apr 1861 d. 28 Nov 1919). Julia shows up in the 1880 census with mother Lydia and brothers James and William. If Julia is William's younger sister, her husband, Charles Pope (b. 22 Aug 1858 d. 14 May 1934), put on her death certificate that she was "Illegitimate". I have seen other documents that show question marks for the father information. Does that imply that all of Lydia's children are illegitimate?

As far as I can tell, this family stayed in Chatham County, NC from birth to death.

Any insight into this family's history would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Find A Grave - Free Research With A Caveat

   I've entered all the information I'm going to get from my surviving Tate aunts, uncles and cousins. I've entered my father's siblings and my grandfather's siblings, at least those that my aunts and uncles still remember. Birth locations seem to be fairly easy for them to recall, but birth date questions for their aunts and uncles are greeted with a blank-eyed stare.
   I'm sure this web site is well documented somewhere, but it was a very pleasant surprise to me when it showed up in a Google search for something unrelated, FindAGrave.com.
   FindAGrave.com is a wonderful site for adding birth dates, date of death and potentially place of death with several caveats; i.e. 1) the person giving the information may not correctly remember the deceased's birth date and date of death or have access to the documents that provide them, 2) the person taking down the information might not jot down the information legibly or hear the person correctly, 3) the deceased or their family may have chosen to be cremated and therefor there will be no entry in FindAGrave.com, 4) there might not be a picture of the headstone or grave marker for your loved one in FindAGrave.com's database and 5) in the case of multiple marriages, it may not identify the person you thought would be buried along side a loved one.
   FindAGrave.com is a searchable database of potential snapshots and maybe even an obituary or list of family members. The problem comes up more often than not that there is not a snapshot of the grave marker for the person you're looking for. You can request via email that a snapshot be taken and posted or if the cemetery is close, drive over and take one to be uploaded later by you. I'm treating FindAGrave.com as a free database of places to start my search for missing dates of birth and dates of death keeping in mind its pitfalls.
   I plan to fact check these dates with census information, death certificate images and WWI or WWII Draft Card images and other sources from Ancestry.com. Of course at that point, I'll have to start subscribing to Ancestry.com so I can finally see what those little jiggling leafs are all about.

Here's a screen shot of the results so far...

The Perfect Thanksgiving - This One's Just For Fun

So, during the week leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, I told Lisa I was planning to go out and shoot us a turkey and not to worry about buying a bird for the big meal. I loaded up the big ole 12 gauge and put on my camo and headed out. For those of you who don’t know, birds can see color, so good camo is a must.

It wasn’t long after day break (you hunters out there know you can’t shoot turkeys before official sunrise), I found a few clustered together and picked out a nice 12 to 15 pounder. I took careful aim and pulled the trigger on “Ole Bessy” … KAABOOOM!

I’m pretty sure those two little old ladies in the frozen food section of that particular Harris Teeter soiled themselves while diving for cover. How did those two crazy women think they were going to bag a turkey without camo?

The Harris Teeter manager came running over yelling and screaming and waving his arms like he was conducting flight operations on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. He finally calmed down enough to say, “You sir, are no longer welcome here!”

Great! Now, where the heck am I supposed to go shooting for our Christmas lamb?

Sometimes Even the Newspapers Get It Wrong

   In researching the information for my Tate grand parents, I was steered to a cousin who had an obituary for my grandfather. I asked him if he could send it to me, but it was a copy from the original and hadn't been scanned into a computer file. So, he agreed to read it to me over the phone instead. At my request, he went through the obituary two times and I made note of names, dates and places. Some of the names were known to me and some were completely new.

   As an aside, I work as a computer programmer and I tend to live by the moto, “If I ask you the same question three different ways, do I get the same answer back all three times?” This saves an enormous amount of time on the front-end by getting people to think about their answers and the possible exceptions. This process most definitely does not endear me to my co-workers. lol

   So, I entered the information for my relatives that my cousin read to me into Ancestry, then called up one of my aunts. In an effort to validate what I had, I started asking her what she remembered about my grandfather’s death and those relatives that made it into the obituary. Right out of the gate, my paternal great grandmother’s information, specifically her maiden name, was wrong in the obituary. Somehow, the person taking the information over the phone, way back when, heard Harper for great grandma's maiden name when the family member giving the information said Parker.

   That's a pretty big error to have to figure out if you're just starting out with your family research. Needless to say, even if the information is in print from a reputable source, verify its accuracy whenever possible.

Here is the obituary reproduced, in part, from the newspaper:

Source:
"Greenville News, May 29, 1961 p11

V.L. Tate

Vollie Lee Tate, 47, of 3 Bryson St. died at a local hospital at 2 a.m. yesterday, after a long period of declining health and five weeks of serious illness.

A native of Greenville County, Mr. Tate was born Oct. 16, 1913 and had spent his entire life here. His parents were Henry L. and Lydia Harper Tate of Greer.

Mr. Tate was employed at Dunean Mill in the spinning department. He was a Baptist."


Here's a screenshot of the results so far ...

Family Names and the Occasional Curve Ball

   Back in the late nineties, I was visiting relatives in South Carolina when I got a phone call that my paternal grandmother, Irene, had fallen and was taken to the hospital. Nothing was broken, but they had decided to admit her for observation. My wife and I left our kids with my mother and headed off to the hospital.

   We went into the hospital and inquired about patient, Irene Alexander (she had remarried after my paternal grandfather's untimely death), and the lady at the information counter dutifully checked her list.

   "I'm sorry, we haven't admitted a Irene Alexander."

   "How about Irene Tate?"

   "No, I'm sorry. I don't have an Irene Tate either."

   Just as I start to think that I'm going to have to make a break for it and start checking every room in the place for that old woman, my sister comes through the door and heads my way. I tell her that they don't have our grandmother listed as Irene Tate or Irene Alexander and I'm at a loss as to what else it could be.

   My sister says, "That's not her given name."

   She asks the lady, "Did you admit a Lenard Tate or Lenard Alexander?"

   She says, "Yes, we did. He's on the 3rd floor."

   We head off to the elevator banks and I ask my sister to explain. Apparently, Grandma Irene's father had four girls in a row, so my grandmother being the fifth girl received a boy name and her next youngest sister, Otis, got stuck with one as well. I guess great grandfather Gilstrap figured if he wasn't going to have boys, he was, by George, going to name some of them that way. lol

   So keep in mind that sometimes the names used during family get-togethers are not necessarily the names that show up on their birth certificate or at hospital check-in.

Here's a screenshot of the results so far ...

My Tate Family Origins

 I was curious about my Tate ancestors, not being around many of them growing up. My mother and father divorced when I was about 10 or so and my sister and I lived with my mother. My father remarried when I was in my early teens.  Mom had a few near misses, but didn't remarry. I have a step sister from my father's second marriage. I've seen a lot of Ancestry.com commercials, I figured I would create an account and see what I could find out.
   You can create a free Ancestry.com account, but it's not obvious how. Ancestry.com does its best to get you to pay them money or sign up for a trial account which converts to a paid account in 14 days unless you cancel. Anyway, after the initial account creation, I got stuck on one of their screens to choose the account type, unfortunately, free wasn't one of the choices unless you choose the 14 day trial. Hmmmm. I used the browser's address bar to navigate back to Ancestry.com and bingo, I was back on the home screen.
   If you hover your mouse pointer over the "Family Trees" button, you get a drop down box of options, I chose the "Start a new tree" option and I was off and running. When you click on "Add a new person", you start by entering your information and there is a check box indicating the first entry or home person is you. You can change this later if you need or want to. I entered my basic info, name, birth date and birth place and hit save. There is an option to enter your spouse information that shows up underneath the home person, so I entered my wife's information as well.
   After I entered my wife's information, Ancestry.com gave me a pop up box to name my new tree and to select whether I wanted it to be private or public. I chose to make it public with the knowledge that Ancestry will "hide" anyone in my tree that is living.
   I added more info for my wife and I using the "+Add Fact" command button. I entered our marriage date and place. I entered our children's information and started with our parents. After entering our parents info, I moved on to our grandparents. Things started getting a little tricky here for us. Time to makes some phone calls to our surviving parents, aunts and/or uncles.

Here's a screen shot of the results so far...