Ancestry/Genealogy

Most of my mother's ancestors came from South Carolina. During the American Civil War, Sherman's army marched through there and burned many court houses and churches, destroying many records that would clear up a lot of family lines.

I joke that my husband's ancestor destroyed my ancestors' records - one of his ancestors was a Union soldier in Sherman's army so he was along for a lot of that destruction.

As much as we complain new about the limitations of what is available, I think back to when my father's mother was doing her genealogical research over a hundred years ago - very little was available, not even most census records. A lot of her research was from letters written by elderly relatives - one of the letters we have in our files was written by a distant cousin of hers that was born in 1818 and written when the lady was nearly a hundred years old! Another was written by a cousin of my great great grandfather about how the spelling of the family name was changed about 1800.

We have it good compared to back then!