Still a Viking

I was looking at my Ancestry.com DNA results recently after they announced they had improved them and was surprised at the results.

It now shows my ancestor's ethnicity is 70% from Great Britain. What happened? They used to show me as 97% Scandinavian. Now I am only 12%.

They say this 70% is more than what a typical native from Great Britain would have as they are only coming in at 60%.  All those British war brides I suppose...

Frankly I was kind of happy before to have Scandinavian heritage. I would rather claim a connection to one of the Viking invaders than the Wimbledon crowd.

I guess I will have to look for evidence that one of my Viking grandfather's found a wife on the Island and settled down there. That would be a plausible explanation for the test results.

William H. Adams

William H. Adams was my gg grandfather. He was born in 1837 to Elijah Adams and Sarah Mann in the Bogue Sound area of Carteret County North Carolina.

 

In 1868 he married Hope Jane Foreman and my great grandmother Sallie Adams was born two years later.

 

He is listed on the 1870 census in Newport, North Carolina but by time of the 1880 census Hope was listed as a widow. The 1870 census below shows they had a son Alexander who apparently died young.

 

1870 ADAMS WILLIAM Carteret County NC 231 Newport Township Federal Population Schedule NC 1870 Federal Census Index NC5231135
ADAMS, WILLIAM 32
Jane 25 wife
Alexander 10/12 son
State: NC Year: 1870
County: Carteret County
Township: Newport Township
Page: 231

I don't know what happened to William Adams. There are a lot of Adams and Mann family members in the area. Many are buried in the Harlowe Methodist Church Cemetery where Hope's family members are buried. I can't find any record of him after the 1870 census.

 

I think this Civil War muster roll is him but I am not sure. It shows him enlisting in the 2nd Light Artillery Regiment on November 7, 1861. This was also known as the 36th Regiment Volunteers. If this is him it is the only paper record, other than the marriage and census records.

 

The Family Search web page put some old North Carolina Probate records online but there is no index and I haven't gotten motivated to search page by page through the 1,145,307 pages. I might check at the Carteret County Court if I have some free time next on the next visit.

 

I've also looked all the cemetery listings in the area including the WPA survey from 1937 and couldn't find him or his parents. Maybe one day they will turn up.

Sister Act

My grandfather, Tink Fulford was the youngest son of nine children in his family. He had four sisters and they were the only siblings surviving along with him when this photo was taken on the dock of Fulford Fish Company in Cortez, Florida.

The picture was taken during a family reunion, probably in 1963 or 1964. Tink organized the family reunions almost every summer.

The print isn't very good and this was the best I could do with it. I don't know who took it or if a negative is still available.

 

The oldest child in the family and the sister on Tink's left is Dora Jane Fulford Adams. She was born in 1889 on Perico Island in Manatee County and died in 1969. She married Willis Asbury Adams, who fished and also managed fish houses in Cortez. They had ten children but one died at birth. Dora was buried in the Palma Sola Cemetery in Bradenton near her parents.

On Tink's right is Bessie Fulford Evans Henning who was born in 1899 in Cortez and died in 1973 in St. Petersburg, Florida. She and her first husband, John Cecil Evans had four children. He was a fisherman in Cortez and then ran a fish house in St. Petersburg. Later she married William A. Henning. She is buried in the Royal Palm Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

On the far right is Grace Mae Fulford Guthrie. She was born in born in 1906 in Cortez and died in 1976.  She married James Ottaway Guthrie who was born in North Carolina, moved to Cortez in the 1920s and ran a fish house in Manatee County. His middle name was for Otway Burns who was a famous North Carolina Privateer in the War of 1812 and distant relative. Over the years someone misspelled the name and it took. They had five children. Grace is buried in Palma Sola Cemetery

On the far left is Sally "Sissy" Fulford Moore. She was born in 1907 in Cortez and died in 1992. She and her husband John Allen Moore had three children. They owned Moore's Stone Crab Restaurant on Longboat Key, Florida. She was the one I knew the best and always enjoyed when she was around. I can remember taking fish to the restaurant many times when I was working at Fulford Fish as a kid. She is also buried in the Palma Sola Cemetery.

Caught in High Water

I have a distant cousin on Facebook who lives in Alabama and he has posted photos several times of the flooding around his home. If they get a heavy rain he has a good chance of water standing in the yard and if it rains too long he'll have TV crews parked in the driveway waiting for a story.



Alabama Floods - Harper's Weekly April 17, 1886

It reminded me of a story about my wife's gg grandfather John Wiley. He was born August 3, 1809 in Rhone County Tennessee and died January 2, 1886 near Chulafinnee, Alabama. He had the misfortune to be caught in the worst flooding Alabama has had recorded since 1814.


According to the US Geological Survey the Alabama River in Montgomery was recorded at 160.6 feet in April of that year, which is 24.7 feet over flood stage.  


The family story is that he had gone to Chulafinnee about 50 miles from his home in Bluff Springs, Alabama to teach Sunday School in the local church. He died in the flood and because of the high water they couldn't bring his body back home.


He is buried in the Chulafinnee Methodist Church Cemetery.

The inscription on his marker says:

Sacred to the memory of John Wiley.
The remains of his wife Susanah Wiley are buried near Gibsonville, Clay Co., Al.

Dear Father, we have to bid thee adieu, for death has parted us and you. As we are now, so once was you. As you are now, soon we shall be.

The Lord has been your Shepard true and carried you Home to Heaven to live.

O, May we our labor do, and prepare to meet you in Heaven too.