One Name at a Time

This morning I made a glorious discovery!! Merry Christmas to me!!!

I have often made the comment that I find genealogy fascinating. Putting a family history together is like assembling a giant jig-saw puzzle. Love the 1,000-piece puzzles? Try a 5,000 piece puzzle and that might give you an idea of the challenges of putting a family history together. It takes tremendous patience and motivation to just keep looking at the pieces and wondering where everyone fits.

Of course friends and family have advised me that if I didn’t spend so much time researching for other people I would have more time for my own family research and therefore be more successful. Seems logical, but doesn’t quite work that way. Moving back and forth from one family to another keeps me from becoming bored and frustrated by the “brick walls” I encounter in my own family research, and I feel a  tremendous sense of satisfaction in helping others with their requests. I’ve learned so much about Caddo’s history and I am able to envision what life was like here for my ancestors.

This morning there was a sudden juxtaposition of my Caddo research and my family research that prompted me to discover something that has eluded me for years! I posted a wedding announcement to my Caddo blog for Don Lynn Maddox and Edna Green, 1902. My great-great grandmother’s name was Mary Martha Maddox Carlton and I wondered this morning if the two families were related somehow. I searched for Don and a couple of his relatives, but didn’t find a solid connection. My grandmother always said she didn’t know who Mary’s father was, but she remembered that he was murdered when Mary was 14. That would have been 1868.

I Googled Mary’s name again, as I have done at least once a year for the past several years. Lo and behold, here is what I found:

• Source: Clay Co. MO Archives News. Deaths in the Newspaper 1868

The Liberty Tribune 1868

Liberty, Clay County, Missouri

Sept 4, 1868

Murder- Robert Maddox was found in the road about four miles north of his home on Friday morning last, Murdered. He had been shot. It is to be hoped his murderer will be brought to punishment. Of all the systems of murder, that of private assassination is the most damnable.

Put Robert’s name into a RootsWeb search and found out his wife’s name was Ann. My grandmother’s journal says that “g-grandmother moved back to Kentucky after her husband’s death and Mary was baptized in a pond in Kentucky”. Checked Ancestry and there they are in Daviess, Kentucky in the 1870 census!

Have I told you lately how much I love the internet?

One more piece in the puzzle. The search continues….

 

Comments

[Megan]

I can almost hear you giggling from here.