I had always thought it was an insult that my ancestor Phebe Barbee left her daughter Lourina Motley 50 cents in 1836.
But, when you read other wills from Orange County, North Carolina, you realize that is what people in that area, and in that era, did. They acknowledged their older adult children by leaving them a token amount. One man left each of his seven older children 10 shillings each.
During the same time period, some of my South Carolina relatives left their kin the “next year’s crop.”
When you’re reading wills as part of your genealogy research, be careful not to make assumptions about relationships or how much the deceased valued family members based on what was left to them. You must study an area to see what the norm was in estate affairs. Often, there were regional differences.
In the same family, my ancestor’s father, Benjamin Barbee, in his 1825 will, referred to his four married daughters only by their first names. So, if you did not know better, you would think they were not married. But all were — he just chose not to mention their legal surnames.
“Finding Your Roots” returns
The popular genealogy program “Finding Your Roots” will return October 13, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The show airs on Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB). The first episode is brand new, but, in later episodes, previously shown segments will be mixed with new ones. It is always worth watching to see how Gates and his staff provide celebrities with new information about their ancestry. It should help others to start asking questions among their own family.
Farmers market bulletin digitized by UGA
Recently, it was announced that more than 1,712 issues of the Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin, dating from 1926-1963, are available for free online at dlg.uga.edu. The bulletins are available, thanks to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, the University of Georgia Map and Government Information Library, and the Digital Library of Georgia. To find it online, search for “Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin” DLG and the press release will appear with access information.
Contact Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., P.O. Box 901, Decatur, Ga., 30031 or kenthomasongenealogy.com.
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