The Little Details Can Mean So Much

If you weren't aware of it, Ancestry.com has released a new collection, U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index 1936--2007. Check out the Ancestry blog here for more details. I was checking to see if I could learn anything new about some of my Morehead City, NC ancestors and found a wonderful detail that had eluded me until now.

 My great grandmother Ophelia Jones Bryant, I've written about quite a bit on this blog. Her photograph is what inspired me to learn more about my ancestors. Anyway, there's this thing that had been bothering me for a long time that I did not know about her.

Little Details Can Mean So Much --How Did I Get Here? My Amazing Genealogy Journey
Image courtesy of Ancestry.com

"T" was all I knew of Ophelia's middle name. Until now...

Image courtesy of Ancestry.com


Her middle name was Thomson/Thompson!
What's cool about this find is that I know now why my grand aunt Eloise Thompson Bryant Grigsby's middle name was Thompson. I then asked myself the question, why did Rosa Mitchell Jones, Ophelia's mother, choose Thompson for Ophelia's middle name? I thought about it some. I looked at census records to see if there was perhaps a neighbor who had the Thompson surname. Then I remembered this.

Source Information Ancestry.com. North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: North Carolina County Registers of Deeds. Microfilm. Record Group 048. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC

Rosa's sister Margaret "Maggie" Mitchell of Riverdale, NC married a William Thompson. Maybe the Mitchell and Thompson families were friends. Perhaps giving Ophelia the middle name "Thompson" was Rosa's way of honoring that family. 

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