Family Names

Naming boys after Presidents or famous people is not unique to my family. I was named after my grandfather who was named after Millard Fillmore. His father was named for Andrew Jackson. Grandpa who was a poet himself of sorts, named one of his sons after William Cullen Bryant. Another Green relative was named for Thomas Jefferson.

In my grandmother Edith Wilson's family everyone had a lot of children so using Presidents or famous people may have been for convenience. I know we had difficulty in naming our children and we only had two.

Edith's father was named after Benjamin Franklin. He named one of his sons Abraham Lincoln. He had a nephew named Grover Cleveland Wilson. That's not a President's name you see very often!

Some of the boys in the Wilson family had family names that were passed down from one generation to another. Jasper, Leroy and Moses were repeated in at least 5 generations over many branches.

Bricks without straw

I really don't know if they used straw or not.

I've just started researching the brick making of some of my ancestors. My Fulford family who settled in Carteret County North Carolina and lived on the same land for 300 years had time to make a living in many different ways.

There is a story about the saloon they ran in the 1800s which I will have to explore on another day.

There is also the story that Joseph Fulford found a river of red clay on his property and started making bricks. The clay was located on the Straits, just behind the current Straits Methodist Church.

The Fulfords dug out the clay and made it into bricks. Some of the old bricks have been found in the water out in front of the property where they apparently fell off or were discarded from the boats taking them to places of construction.

One of those places where the bricks ended up was Fort Macon, at the point of the harbor in Beaufort, North Carolina. The old fort, built between 1826-1834 is still standing. It was later scene of the only real Civil War battle in the area around Beaufort and several of the great grandsons of Joseph Fulford were on the losing side.

Finding a good Man

One of my daughters is married and she did well, found a good man. The other one is still looking.

I have been looking for a good man for reasons of my own. The Y chromosome DNA testing that is done for genealogy research requires a male of the particular surname to be tested. I was tested for the Green project and my uncle Wayne was tested for the Fulford project. A cousin Steve, was tested for the Lawrence project and another cousin, Larry was tested for the Wilson project..

There are several other family lines that would be nice to have a relative of that name come forward and be tested. The Rowell, Hogan, Blanchard and Lundy families are all well known for the last hundred and fifty years but have hit a brick wall at 1800. It would be good to have a cousin in one of these families agree to be tested. The problem is there aren't a lot of them around.

The Preacher's family

I did a summary of all the preachers in our family six years ago for a family reunion. Some of our family are pretty closed to people who don't attend a church with a sign out front that says Church of Christ. They wouldn't want to admit that their heritage included many who were leaders in other churches.

I have been recently researching the Burgess family of North Carolina. My mother's family descends from them but there was really no information known about them in our family. Several of my cousins had done genealogy research but none had discovered the connection to the Burgess family.

The Shiloh Baptist Church in Camden County North Carolina is the oldest Baptist Church in North Carolina. It dates back to 1727.

It first met in the house of our ancestor William Burgess and later after he donated the land where they built a church building. Burgess, his son and grandson all served as Preachers of the church. Another grandson was a minister in the Methodist church.

House churches are popular today in many places as an alternative to a church that meets in a building. Folks today probably thought it was their original idea.