W.A. Brooks

I think I may have finally found more information on my great-great-grandfather, W.A. Brooks. Until recently, the only documented name I had for him was W.A. Brooks. Both the Kaufman county marriage records and his tombstone only list his initials. My Aunt Mary had told me before that she thought his name was William Ashbury Brooks, but I had nothing to confirm that. Then recently I received a picture of him and his wife from a cousin and it was captioned Asberry Brooks.

I know from the census records that W.A. Brooks died before 1910, as his widow, Ruby, and her children were living with her parents in Kaufman County. I found a W.A. Brooks buried in Rains-Hall Cemetery near the Kaufman/Dallas county line. The tombstone states that he was born July 10, 1881 and died October 1, 1908. (BTW, July 10th also happened to be my mother’s birthday!)

I had been searching in Kaufman county for other records for W.A. Brooks. I found many Brooks families but no connection. So I thought since the community they are believed to have lived in is so close to the Dallas County line, I would look in Dallas County. I found a family in the Dallas County 1900 census that listed a William A Brooks born July 1881. I’m almost certain this is my man but I would love to have more proof. Since the census lists how many children are born to a mother and how many are still living, I am hoping I can find his mother in the 1910 census and that it will indicate that she has one less child. However, I am having great difficulty finding this family as the 1910 census at Ancestry.com only has a head-of-household index. I’ve even tried looking for their neighbors in hopes of finding them nearby, but haven’t had much luck there either. The other roadblock is that the 1910 census index is not directly linked to the images so you have to do a bit more manual labor to find the right page.

But even still, this is all much more luck than I had been having!

Jackpot!

I thought I'd share with you all the story of how I filled in the information on Elizabeth "Lizzie" Lewis Adams.

When I received the postcard collection from my grandmother, I transcribed all the postcards and then started reading all of it. I noticed that they all seemed to be from related children. There were several kids with the surname Lewis and several with the surname Rector and some from Lizzie's own kids with the surname Adams. The Rector kids and the Adams kids would sometimes refer to Uncle Nath Lewis and each kid would refer to cousins coming to visit. I copied down some of the names and started searching the Rootsweb Worldconnect ( http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ )for matches.

I found a man named William Nathan Lewis who had several children with names matching the ones from the postcards. Nathan's wife's maiden name was Lula Annie Rector. I started following the Rector line and found a brother of Lula who had children with names matching the ones from the postcards. I thought it had to be a match, but found no connection to Lizzie listed.

Nathan was about the same age as Lizzie so I thought he might be her brother, but had not way of knowing since the tree I found listed Nathan as an only child. So I started searching the census at Genealogy.com (I prefer Ancestry's search capabilities, but currently had a trial subscription to this one) for the parents of Nathan Lewis - William C. and Winifred Mayfield Lewis.

Jackpot! I found them in 1860 in Sumter County, Alabama. It listed William Nathan, Lizzie and several other siblings. I was able to follow this family forward and find many of the families in later years living near each other.

I never thought an old box of postcards could bring so much information. Well I hoped, but never really thought it was possible.

Sydney Dove

Okay. So here's the information I found on the Lamar County TXGenWeb thanks to Mom's email.

Sydney Dove (Oct 14 1880 - May 29 1933) and his wife Lydia (Hamilton) Dove (Oct 21 1888 - Apr 1 1978) are buried in the Knights of Honor Cemetery in Blossom, Lamar County, TX. Their son Arnold S. Dove (Aug 21 1920 - Feb 27 1999) is buried there also. His obituary was also posted online:

THE PARIS NEWS, Sunday, February 28, 1999, page 10A: 'Arnold S. Dove, 78, of Paris, died Saturday, Feb. 27, 1999. He was born Aug. 21, 1920, in Paris, a son of Sidney and Lydia Dove. He married Helen V. Burton June 26, 1941. He was a Baptist. Dove also was a stone mason and member of the Hurst Masonic Lodge 1387 and Hanley Mason Lodge. The body will lie in state from 1-6 p.m. Sunday in Gene Roden's Sons Funeral Home. Masonic graveside services will be at 2 p.m. Monday in Knights of Honor Cemetery in Blossom. Survivors include his wife, Helen Virginia Dove; a son and daughter-in-law, Donald L. and Linda Dove of Burleson; a son, Philip Dove of Hurst; grandchildren, Aaron, Jason, Timothy and Christopher Dove, and a sister, Maye Evans of Edmond, Ok.'

Getting Started

I just got my genealogy website up and running finally. I recently read an article in Family Tree Magazine about creating a blog to keep track of your research. It's kind of like a high tech research journal. Hopefully, putting it all in writing might help me see what I'm missing and help me to fill in some of the missing branches of my tree.

My website is already working to my advantage. My mother visited the website and as she was browsing through the family tree, she remembered more details about some of her relatives. She sent me an email telling me the approximate death date of her great-grandmother and where she believed her to be buried. She also told of two relatives that died young that I did not have in my charts. I followed up on her notes and found the information on her great-grandmother on the Lamar County TXGenWeb site, which I will post later.

I sent off a request to the military for any reports relating to the accident that killed my uncle Wallace Esbon Matthews during WWII. I have now received a second response from them telling me that my request has been forwarded to yet another department to find the records. I hope they find something soon!

I also sent off a request for his birth certificate to the TX vital records department. They cashed my check back in August, but I still haven't received a response. I hate waiting on the government! I'm too impatient.