Smile for the Camera-18th Edition--Travel

This edition of Smile for the Camera is the 18th edition and the word prompt is Travel.
My contribution is a picture of my Uncle Morris B. Cooke(my Dad's brother) on his Indian Motorcycle. I'm not sure what year this was taken. My guess would be late 1940's/early 1950s. I believe the motorcycle would be a model made some time in the mid-40s. My Cooke family lived in Old Hickory, TN which was for the most part a company town built around the Dupont plant which opened there in 1918.

A Genealogist's Holiday Wish list

The holidays are drawing near and about this time every year people are wondering what to get the genealogist on their list. I've read articles on this subject which have suggested

• Subscription to Family Tree Magazine, Heritage Quest or another genealogy related magazine
• Database Subscriptions(Footnote.com, Ancestry.com, WorldVitalRecords etc.)
• Week long trip to the FHL in SLC
• A Genealogy Conference
  

All of those are wonderful ideas. I love my subscription to Family Tree Magazine as well as my Footnote.com subscription.

Now if Santa is wondering what I'd like for Christmas:
(Cue the "Santa Baby" music)

• William Clifford Cook's parents' names(he married in Williamson Co TN and lived in Bedford Co. TN)
• Census Entries for the Wm. Taylor Hale family in 1860 & 1870(minus Wm.) they should be in Van Buren Co. TN
• Thomas Adcock's parents' names--(Warren Co TN area)
• Records from Annie Pitman Dunham's visit to Talequah in 1866
• Pictures of the six GG Grandparents( I have pics of 2 sets): Wm C. & Elizabeth Putman Cook, George & Catherine Morrow Jakes, David & Rebecca Manley Frizzell, Elisha & Keziah Rigsby Luna, David and Mary Adcock Pitman, Wm P. & Nancy Arminda Hitchcock Hale.

These should all be fairly easy for Santa. After all, at one time he had to know where these people were in order to deliver Christmas goodies(or perhaps their lump of coal).

In Search of Confederate Pension Records

I read an article from the Terre Haute News entitled GENEALOGY: Confederate pension records out there for the asking written by Tamie Dehler.

It has some good information for those researching Confederate soldiers but one section in particular caught my attention.

Dehler writes:

"However, the National Archives has no Confederate pension records in its files. To order these, one would have to contact the state from which the Confederate soldier served."

The last statement is not correct. To order PENSION files a researcher would contact the state in which the soldier or widow was living when they applied for pension. This wouldn't necessarily be the state in which the soldier served since the majority of states that granted Confederate pensions did not do so until 20+ years after the war(on average).

I've done a bit of research using Confederate Pension Records mainly with Tennessee & Texas pensioners. Most of the TX Pensions I have worked with were for soldiers who had served in TN.

See my Confederate Pension Abstractions for an idea of what is on the TN & TX applications. These application did vary in the questions that they asked even within the same state and year to year.

My favorite question that they asked the Soldier is:

Do you use intoxicants?

Clues from Pearl

I've spent the last few weeks pouring over old letters postcards and receipts that my grandmother had in her scrapbooks. I was able to get a lot of information about where my grandparents lived at different times by studying things that you might not think would contain genealogy information.

Television repair receipts, postcards from family & friends, insurance policies, hospital bills, money order receipts....yes my Grandma Pearl Jakes Cooke was a pack rat but I'm thankful for that.

Sept 1945 911 Dotson St. Old Hickory, TN
Nov 1952 1209 Calvin Ave. Nashville, TN
July 1953 1209 Calvin Ave. Nashville, TN
Nov 1957 903 W. Eastland Ave. Nashville, TN
Mar 1965 402 North 16th St Nashville, TN
June 1966 1020 W. Eastland Ave. Nashville, TN
June 1970 144 Harrington Ave Madison TN
Dec 1971 203 North Charlotte St Dickson, TN
June 1974 110 Mae Circle Dickson, TN

Wordless Wednesday

Tombstone Tuesday-Dekalb Co. TN- Mt Holly Cem. picture taken in early '90's

Wade Clinton Ervin
son of Charlie Clinton Ervin
Grandson of Thomas Clinton Ervin & Ella Watts
Gr Grandson of Christopher Columbus Ervin

This photo was taken abt 1992. The Ervin line is a paternal line of my deceased son.
My son was the GGG Grandson of Christopher Columbus Ervin.