All My Ancestors

Wow.

I broke all my own research rules today.  I didn’t call ahead, I forgot that “the courthouse burned,” and I got there late.

By not calling ahead, I didn’t find out that the County Clerk’s office was not in the court house, but in a nearby building.  It didn’t take too long to find the Clerk’s office, but we had gotten there late.  (In my defense, I did check the GenWeb site and Handybook, but obviously didn’t see the info about the offsite Clerk’s office.)

Let’s back up a bit.  My non-genie, though interested, brother offered to go on a short road trip with me to East Texas.  He kept saying he needed a break, and so here we are.  I’ve just spent the last 4 weeks on the computer day and night getting a class I’m teaching online refined and uploaded, and it started Tuesday.  I was due a little break, but working on the class meant I didn’t get to do my usual “up front” prep.  I flew to Houston this morning and we “flew” north, via his Jeep Cherokee, as soon as I landed.  That meant we didn’t get to Center, county seat of Shelby County, until about 3:30.

When we got over to the actual County Clerk’s office, when I asked to look for a marriage record from 1857, I was met with “The courthouse burned in 1883 and all those records are gone so we won’t have anything like that.”  Yikes.  Had I done a better job of preparing, I would have remembered this fact.  I believe it’s the reason I’ve never found a marriage record for my 3rd great-grandparents, John B. Cooper and Mary E. Mitchell.  I did retain my cool enough to ask if any of the records had been recreated, and she indicated that some had been re-registered.  Short story, the place was packed to the gills with landmen doing oil and gas work, but I shouldered my way in and looked in the indexes.  I was able to find the re-registration of an 1860 deed when 4th great-grandfather Job Cooper sold 218 acres of his original 640 acre headright.  Of course, I ‘d like to know what happened to the rest of the land, but that’s for another “mission.” He sold the land June 1860, which does give me a date of removal from Shelby County to Johnson County, and the deed was re-filed 1889.  I had a bit of a tussel with one of the young women who worked in the office–there was no sign saying copying stopped at 4:00 and I evidently missed the deadline by a couple of minutes.  She was balancing her checkbook when she turned around and told me about the deadline.  I had not seen a posted notice, and, swallowing my pride, went up to her desk and asked her very nicely if she would copy one page since I was from out of state and would not be back tomorrow.  She agreed.  Not cheerfully, but she did it.

Then we went out to Pleasant Grove Cemetery, where Mary E. Mitchell’s mother is buried.  Of course we took the wrong road out of town and had to turn around, but MapQuest finally came through.  (Did I forget to mention that my iPhone said it was fully charged this morning but was in fact, on the last dregs of the battery?)  The photocopy of the photograph I have of her tombstone makes it look very large, when, in fact, it is very small.  My brother was sure we could make some money mapping those cemeteries–it’s been fun “educating” him to the ways of genealogists and court house personnel.  So I can post the photo on Tombstone Tuesday one of these days.

Right now, I’m beat, and have to rest up for my foray to the Rusk County courthouse tomorrow.  John Mitchell’s probate from 1848 is supposedly on file despite “central business district” fire in 1860.

With fingers crossed .  .  .

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