Shreveport
My Families in the 1940 Census, Part II
Once the indexing was completed I set about trying to find my families by name in the 1940 census. I concentrated on what I consider to be my four main lines: Manson, Gines, Bowie, and Bryant. My results were somewhat underwhelming. Gines family: I’ve already mentioned that I found my maternal grandmother and some of her children but that their …
September 8, 2012 Saturday at 5:42 pm
The Grand Genealogy Journey 2010 (Virtual Edition) Starts Anew
Believe it or don’t, but it’s been three years since the Big Train Trip. I’m really ready to go again, but circumstances currently won’t allow that. So we started to lay out our virtual genealogical dream trip traveling via Amtrak and other conveyances. We ran into a set of difficulties soon after the beginning of the trip. As a result, …
June 30, 2010 Wednesday at 2:34 pm
Good Schools A Staple of Ancestors’ Lives
This was produced for the 17th edition of “Smile for the Camera” I really don’t have much in the way of photographs on my ancestors’ school days. I have in the past posted school census records from the very early twentieth century in Milam County, Texas, where my gg-grandmother and her descendants lived. But I know virtually nothing about my …
September 10, 2009 Thursday at 3:05 pm
When A Wild Goose Chase Isn’t A Wild Goose Chase
Some Lessons from Our Pursuit of Egans Gines We had started out to get past the brick wall of my great-grandfather, Richard William Gines, who was born in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, in about 1860. After years no success either on the ground (we visited Bossier Parish as well as Caddo Parish in 2004 to research this matter) or online, we …
May 22, 2009 Friday at 6:44 pm
Louisiana Public Records Online Access: Good and Ugly
I’ve written favorably about the vital records index at the Louisiana State Archives. It’s easy to use to look up information and it’s set up to make ordering certified copies by snail mail easy. Unlike Texas, Louisiana does not have an on-line ordering capability run by the state. But since they make everything else so easy, I barely noticed. Now …
May 1, 2009 Friday at 1:58 pm
2009: Day 3
Is the honeymoon with the new year over already? I’m betting that by Monday morning, that’s what of us will be thinking! But I’ve had a good first three days! On the one hand, I missed the Carnival, which broke one of my resolutions, but it was unavoidable. Plagued by connectivity problems all week (which are now solved), I was …
January 3, 2009 Saturday at 9:53 pm
My Favorite Photograph
This was supposed to have been a post for the 4th Edition of Smile for the Camera at Shades of the Departed, but I missed the deadline. (Somewhere along the line, about three weeks ago, perhaps, I slid behind schedule and have been running to catch up! We’ll see what that means for the Games!). In any event, I decided …
August 14, 2008 Thursday at 8:54 pm
Where Was Your Family in 1908?
Lisa, who has the energy to write several interesting blogs, posed the question, “Where was your family in 1908?” on, appropriately enough, her 100 Years in America blog. A century ago, neither of my paternal grandparents had been born yet, although one, my grandmother Jessie Beatrice Bowie, was just a year away. Her parents, my great-grandparents, Hattie Bryant and Elias …
January 9, 2008 Wednesday at 3:26 am
Another Cousin Found!
A few weeks ago, I met a cousin from the Brayboy branch of the family at a genealogical conference in Sacramento. That was a very fulfilling meeting on a number of levels and I’m still processing some of the information she gave me. One thing, among many, about that chance meeting, was that it was the first time ever that …
March 28, 2007 Wednesday at 1:15 pm
