Follow Friday – 2 Genealogy Blogs, The Boddie Family, and Great, Great-Grandmother Tempe’s Name

This week, I’ve been following people, places and things:  two blogs, a North Carolina family, and derivations of my great, great-grandmother Tempe’s name. It’s all in pursuit of my next genealogy goal, to find Tempe Burton’s’s birthplace and her parents.

On Monday, I shared here that in researching Judith Boddie Jones, a woman who once owned my great, great-grandmother, Tempe, I discovered, Judith’s sister  was named Temperance.  Too much of a coincidence for me to pass up, I’ve been hunting down the Boddies of Nash County, North Carolina ever since in hopes of finding out more about my ancestor.

So far, here’s what I’ve found and where I found it:

• Temperance Boddie was also called Tempe.    I’ve always wondered where the spelling “Tempe” and name came from as my great, great-grandmother is named on her gravestone and several census documents.  It always struck me as a misprint (shouldn’t it be Tempy with a “y?”), or perhaps short for something else.  Could it be that Tempe was named for a member of the family that owned her?  Temperance Boddie’s sister, Judith Boddie Jones was one of my great, great-grandmother’s last owners.  I found this information about Temperance “Tempe” Boddie in a google book.

• Boddie Family Bible This bible is filled with births and deaths for the Boddie clan spanning about a century.  It didn’t mention Temperance, Judith or any slaves that I could see, but it gave me hope that more useful records about this family exist.  I found this bible on Renate’s blog,  Into the Light. I’ve enjoyed Renate’s posts since joining this community ranging from personal history to genealogy resources,  but after she replied to my Monday blog that she had come across the Boddie name often in  her North Carolina research, I decided to give her site a closer look.   Listed as a resource on Renate’s site is the North Carolina Family Records online.  That’s where I found the Boddie family bible.

• John William Boddie died in Jackson, Mississippi. That’s where Tempe lived as a slave to her final owner, Elizabeth McCauley, Judith Boddie Jones’ granddaughter. Could John be related to Judith B. Jones as well?  I found Boddie’s obituary while perusing Taneya’s Genealogy blog. A medical librarian, Taneya’s penchant for gathering research materials is evident all over her blog and impressive website which boasts a thorough family tree.  Taneya also coordinates several USGen Web projects including the North Carolina portal.  It was there that I found Boddie’s obituary as well as election results that showed a W.W. Boddie was elected to the Senate in 1826. Incidentally,  my third great-grandfather, William Stuart Sr. (Elizabeth’s father-in-law) was also in the Senate during that time, but in Maryland. This big genealogy world is growing smaller every day with every century retraced.

Thanks Taneya and Renate for all the great resources you share along with  your family’s stories.  They’ve inspired me to create a resource list of my own. But first a break to celebrate my b’day and Mother’s Day with my families.   I’d  love suggestions on where to look (and who to follow) on the next leg of this adventure.  Who and what are you following?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Monday Madness: Finding Tempy’s People

My great, great-grandmother, Tempy Burton's 1925 death certificate.

Call me greedy, but finding out what happened to my great, grandmother Josephine was not enough for me.  It just left me wanting more.  Now, I’m determined to discover where and from whom Josephine’s mother, Tempy Burton came from.

Genealogy buddy, Ghita Johnson forwarded Tempy’s death certificate pictured above which I hoped would shed some light on her family. (Thanks, Ghita!) I was crestfallen to see that there were no names written in the spaces next to “father” and “mother,” just some indecipherable letters that I can’t decode. It was also heart-breaking to see that this woman who lived to be 104 and endured a good part of her life as a slave succumbed to”carcinoma of the left breast.”  To find anything about her people, I’d just have to keep chasing down more information about Tempy’s last known owner, Hill Jones.

A longtime resident of Canton, Mississippi, Jones was originally from North Carolina. Scrolling through the volunteer run US Gen Web Project’s North Carolina database turned up no information on him. Last night, I turned to Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Afro Louisiana History and Genelaogy site which has a database of Louisiana based slaves, since some census records list Louisiana as Tempy’s place of birth.  But neither of the  2 Tempys that came up in the search were my great, great-grandmother.  I tried several of the databases in the extensive resource guide listed in about.com (thanks for retweeeting the list LowCountryAfricana) but still nothing. In defeat, I logged on to my ancestry.com site, figuring I could at least feel like I was getting my money’s worth by trolling around the for pay site for a while.  Wouldn’t you know, it actually elicited a clue.

As I looked for documents on Hill Jones, the green leaf blinked on his wife, Judith Jones, indicating that there was a hint for her.  When I clicked on Judith Boddie Jones’s name, my screen filled with several other members researching her line.  Included in each of their trees were Judith’s siblings. Three names stood out:  Elizabeth, William Willis and Temperance.

Elizabeth McCauley was my great, great-grandmother Tempy’s final owner.  Family lore  has it that Tempy was given to Elizabeth when she married my great, great-grandfather, Col. W.R. Stuart.

William Hill Howcott was one of Elizabeth’s cousins and Willis was his slave, immortalized in a Confederate monument erected in his honor.  Willis followed his master into battle against Union forces and died in the process.

Temperance seems to me to be a variation of the name Tempy.

I don’t know if this was the case of a slave being  named after someone in the master’s family, but it gave me a clue.  The same way Tempy came to be in the colonel’s family through his wife, Elizabeth McCauley, is perhaps how she got to be in Hill Jones’s family -through his wife, Judith Boddie.

Who knows if I’ll every find Tempy’s parents, but at least I found all these great new resources and have another place to look: in Nash County, North Carolina with the Boddie family.

Where are you looking for new clues to blast through your brick walls?