Our Family History

August 11, 2010 will mark the 72nd anniversary of the death of my great-great-grandmother, Stella Ophelia Bowling Cunningham. I find her endlessly fascinating, perhaps because I know more about her than I many of my other ancestors. She left behind a diary (pdf), a letter to my great-uncle Alvin Cunningham, and several other letters I [...]

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Artamissa Sparks Willis is my great-great-great-great grandmother. She was born on 15 January 1816 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. She married my great-great-great-great grandfather Andrew Jackson Willis about 1834. They would have eleven children together: David, Newton Allen, Catherine J., Nathaniel A., Milton, Mary, Andrew Jackson, John L. (my great-great-great grandfather), Samuel, James Joseph, and [...]

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July 21, 2010 will mark the 202nd anniversary of the death of Micajah Clark, born September 16, 1718 and died July 21, 1808. Clark was the son of Christopher Clark (1681-1754) and his wife Penelope (1684-1760). He married Judith Lewis Adams about 1736. The couple had twelve children: Christopher (1737-1803), Robert (1738-?), Mourning (1740-?), Micajah [...]

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Jemmie Ray Campbell was my grandmother’s brother. She gave my father the middle name “Ray” in his honor. The 71st anniversary of his death was yesterday: July 8, 1939. Poverty was not uncommon during the Depression, and Appalachia was particularly hard hit. At the time of Jemmie Ray’s birth on June 17 and his death [...]

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I wrote this piece about a year and a half ago at an English teacher conference here in Georgia. It’s about my grandparents’ garden. My grandparents kept a garden, or to be more precise, several gardens in their yard. In the front yard, right in front of the front door, they grew marigolds with large, [...]

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Johnson Franklin Cunningham, pictured below with my great-great grandfather Amos Blakey Cunningham, sent the letter that follows to Amos’s daughter Dessie Cunningham Gray. I think it could mean a great deal to an African-American family if I only knew how to get the information to that family. If anyone knows of a good place to [...]

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Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? The goal for participants of National Novel Writing Month is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. It doesn’t have to be good, nor does it have to be published, but my hope is that my product will be both. I will be participating this year, mainly [...]

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What if you started to research your family history and discovered the mother of all skeletons in the family closet — that you weren’t who you really thought you were? That’s what happened to the descendants of Bobby Dunbar. Bobby Dunbar went missing at the age of four during a family trip to Swayze Lake [...]

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The current Carnival of Genealogy asks genealogy bloggers to share their top posts in the following categories: Best Picture Best Screen Play Best Documentary Best Biography Best Comedy I was fairly silent on this blog in 2007 as my family, career, and other interests pushed genealogy into the back seat. It is not my intention [...]

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Some time back, I shared with you some photos of my great-grandfather Herman Cunningham and his WWI tentmate John Roy McCravey that my aunt Carolyn had sent me. She told me that she had an article about their reunion, but couldn’t find it at the time. Later, she took the trouble to find the article [...]

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