This Guy will have a marker soon

Guy Fulford was my grandfather's first cousin. He was a fisherman in Cortez, Florida and was born in 1894, the son of Nathan Hooker Fulford and Betty Manson Whitehurst Fulford. Guy served in the Navy during WWI and I noticed when I surveyed Palma Sola Cemetery in Bradenton, Florida ten years ago that he didn't have a marker on his grave.

Guy died in 1942 and his grave has a large cement vault over it but no marker other than a small funeral home temporary marker that has been there for almost 70 years. Unfortunately none of the family members could remember when in 1942 he died so I couldn't order a marker for his grave.

I don't like having to pay for research so I tried to locate a newspaper obituary without any success. I found him listed on a index of the Tampa Tribune for December 4, 1942 but couldn't find the actual paper. I finally broke down and ordered the death certificate from the State. It shows he died on December 3, 1942 as a result of Coronary Thrombosis. The death certificate said he and his wife Mamie Giddins Fulford were divorced, a fact I didn't know. His sister Susie Fulford Guthrie gave the personal information on the record.

So now we will get a marker for him.

Broken markers

I was reminded of an old broken tombstone marker recently when I was looking for a family photo. My wife and I found the grave of her ancestor, Thomas Longacre several years ago in Alabama.

He is buried in the Longacre Cemetery in Jackson County. There are only two Longacres there so I assume he owned the land.

Thomas Longacre was born in Virginia in 1788 but like many in his generation migrated to Indian lands when the government moved them west. He settled in the northeastern corner of Alabama and obtained a homestead grant in Jackson County. On the 1850 census he owned 1200 acres and it also showed he had 9 slaves.

He died in 1863 and was buried next to his wife Judith Ireson Longacre who had died five years before.

Over the last hundred and fifty years, the grave marker has been broken into many pieces. The section with most of the inscription has been placed upright against his stone tomb and you can barely make out a few of the words.

"Tears of her….(not legible)
... was devoted
to the service of the
Lord during which time
he was a member of
the Regular Baptist"

What do you remember

The local newspaper asked me to share one memory of Cortez, Florida in the "old days" for an article they were doing. I'm not really old enough to talk about the old days. I would probably need my sister in Virginia to do that.

Anyway, here it is, just in case it never makes it to print:

I used to spend summers and school holidays in Cortez and loved going fishing with my grandfather, Tink Fulford. We didn't fish on Sundays because almost everyone went to church but Sunday night it was ok to go fishing. My grandmother insisted we go to the Church of Christ both Sunday morning and Sunday night. Grandpa Tink didn't go to church on Sunday night and he wanted to leave as soon as possible but he wasn't going to tell my grandmother we couldn't go to church. I would have to run from the church building to the dock as soon as the service was over. Grandpa knew exactly what time we should be there and he would untie, start up the boat and wait. I could hear the boat engine from a block away. He would push off from the dock as soon as he saw me getting close. I had to run and jump on as the boat was pulling off. I don't think he would have left us if we missed the boat but he sure acted like it.

The Crabpot

This is only partly about genealogy research. Three or four years ago I came across some Harvey family members from Carteret County North Carolina. They saw something I wrote about my Foreman family and wanted to know if their Foreman ancestor was related.

It turned out that their great great grandmother, Cornelia Foreman Harvey was the sister of my great great grandmother Hope Jane Foreman. We exchanged several emails and they had some old photos they sent me which I appreciated.

Then this past December I saw a newspaper article about Neal Harvey of Davis, North Carolina and the Core Sound Christmas Trees he was making out of Crabpots. In Florida we call them Crab Traps, but folks in Eastern North Carolina have their own dialect, so they call them Crabpots. A cousin in Cortez, Florida stores a bunch of them next to my mother's house and she has never had very merry thoughts about them, but Neal Harvey got the idea he could brighten up Christmas with them.

Neal has made and sold Crabpots for years and since the fishing business hasn't been too good in recent years decided to use the material and shape a tree out of it. The result is a perfect Christmas tree that can stand up to just about anything mother nature can throw at it. Crab traps have to be strong, since they stay in the water for months at a time and if they develop a hole the fisherman's catch doesn't make it to market.

We bought a 6 foot Core Sound Christmas tree this year and proudly put it in our front yard. Our kids and neighbors will tell you our annual decorations are pretty lame but this year we started a new trend.