It is Week 6 of Amy Johnson Crow's wonderful blogging prompt series, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and this week's prompt is to discuss something that has been a genealogical surprise in some way.
I'm on WikiTree, and having some confusion about a lot of it, but I hope help will set me on the right path. Or paths. Anyway, WikiTree handed me a little bit of a surprise with a suggestion.
My dear friend Amanda has east Tennessee roots. Her father's people are from around Carter County, at the very eastern tip of Tennessee. So is my mother's mother's family. Amanda is something like the third cousin once or twice removed from A. P. Carter, the famous catcher of traditional songs of the area, and singer with the Carter Family, which included his sister-in-law Maybelle [Addington] Carter. She was married to A. P.'s brother Ezra Carter.
WikiTree tells me that, through my mother's family, and a few others, I am distantly related to Maybelle Carter. I have gotten close to making the connections, though some as yet are a tad tenuous. I'm looking for more documents. But I would just be over the moon if I turn out to be related to my friend Amanda.
And what is really odd, to me, is that one of those connected families, the Vanderpools, came to Tennessee from the rather patrician niche of old New Amsterdam, remaining one of the upper-crust families of New York. So how did one branch of that family get to be east Tennessee hillbillies? That's what Amanda calls herself, and she's proud of it. Anyway, in another surprise that I haven't checked out yet, I have found some evidence that the Vanderpools were related, in New Amsterdam/New York, to the Delanos, and we know who they were related to.
If it does turn out that I am related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I will be beyond over the moon. He is one of the presidents I admire most, and Eleanor Roosevelt is one of my role models!
One surprise I found last year on my way to looking at other documents, newspaper articles, and other items in my husband's family is that he is related to one of the finest Governors Florida ever had, Lawton Chiles, who, for his way of getting out and meeting the people of Florida, was known as "Walkin' Lawton." Newspaper articles about his uncle's wedding in the 1920s got me on to birth certificates, marriage records, censuses, and World War I and World War II draft registrations to prove that relationship That was a terrific surprise.
What's next?
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