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.